Speaker
Dr
Jason Link
(NASA GSFC/CRESST(USRA))
Description
Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM) is a new instrument developed to measure the composition and spectrum of cosmic-ray particles up to close to the knee of the cosmic-ray energy spectrum 10^12 – 10^15 eV. The instrument utilizes two modified detectors from the highly successful CREAM balloon instrument, a sampling calorimeter and silicon charge detector. Two new detectors systems, the Top and Bottom Counting Detector (T/BCD) and Boronated Scintillator Detector (BSD) have been built to enable making measurements of high-energy electrons in the instrument. In this paper we focus on the Boronated Scintillator Detector, which detects thermal neutrons in the showers produced by cosmic-rays interacting in the calorimeter. We can discriminate between hadrons and electrons by looking at the number of thermal neutrons produced in these showers. A larger yield of neutrons is produced from hadronic interaction by cosmic-ray nuclei than electromagnetic interactions by high-energy cosmic-ray electrons in showers that deposit equal amounts of energy in the calorimeter. The BSD consists of a detector enclosure containing the boronated scintillator and photomultiplier tubes and an electronic enclosure with signal conditioning, control, communication, housekeeping and power conditioning electronics. We present data on the performance of the detector as measured in the lab and at the CERN H2 beamline in 2012. We also discuss the design challenges and our successful approach in building a space-qualified detector within the constraints of a balloon detector budget.
| Registration number following "ICRC2015-I/" | 582 |
|---|---|
| Collaboration | -- not specified -- |
Primary author
Dr
Jason Link
(NASA GSFC/CRESST(USRA))
