ICRC2015

The Silicon-Tungsten Tracker of the DAMPE Mission

31 Jul 2015, 15:00

15m

Yangtze 2 (World Forum)

Oral contribution DM-IN Parallel DM 02

Speaker

Xin Wu (Universite de Geneve (CH))

Description

DAMPE (DArk Matter Particle Explore) is a satellite mission of the Chinese Academy of Science dedicated to high energy particle detections in space. The main scientific objective of DAMPE is to detect electrons and photons in the range of 5 GeV-10 TeV with unprecedented energy resolution in order to identify possible Dark Matter signatures. It will also measure the flux of nuclei up to 100 TeV with excellent energy resolution, which will bring new insights to the origin and propagation high energy cosmic rays. With it's excellent photon detection capability, the DAMPE mission is also well placed for new discoveries in high energy gamma astronomy. The DAMPE detector consists of a plastic scintillator strips detector (PSD) that serves as anti-coincidence detector, a silicon-tungste (STK), a BGO imaging calorimeter of about 31 radiation lengths, and a neutron detector. The STK is being developed by in international collaboration formed with groups from University of Geneva, INFN Perugia, INFN Bari, INFN Lecce and Institute of High Energy Physics, Beijing. The STK consists of 6 tracking double-layers; each consists of two layers of single-sided silicon strip detectors measuring the two orthogonal views perpendicular to the pointing direction of the apparatus. Three layers of Tungsten plates with thickness of 1mm are inserted in front of tracking layer 2, 3 and 4 for photon conversion. The STK uses single-sided AC-coupled silicon micro-strip detectors. The sensor is 9.5 cm by 9.5 mm in size, 320μm thick, and segmented into 768 strips with a 121μm pitch. Only every other strip will be readout but since analogue readout is used the position resolution is better than 80μm for most incident angles, thanks to the charge division of floating strips. Because of the analog readout STK can also measure the charge of the incident cosmic rays. In this contribution, the key features of the STK will be describes. An overview on the development, qualification and beam tests of an Engineering and Qualification Model, as well as the status of the construction of the Flight Model will be presented.