28 July 2020 to 6 August 2020
virtual conference
Europe/Prague timezone

Towards Understanding the Origin of Cosmic-Ray Positrons

31 Jul 2020, 10:10
25m
virtual conference

virtual conference

Talk 08. Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology

Speaker

Zhili Weng (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (US))

Description

Precision measurements of cosmic ray positrons are presented up to 1 TeV based on 1.9 million positrons collected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station. The positron flux exhibits complex energy dependence. Its distinctive properties are: (a) a significant excess starting from 25.2 GeV compared to the lower-energy, power-law trend; (b) a sharp drop-off above 284 GeV; (c) in the entire energy range the positron flux is well described by the sum of a term associated with the positrons produced in the collision of cosmic rays, which dominates at low energies, and a new source term of positrons, which dominates at high energies; and (d) a finite energy cutoff of the source term at 810 GeV is established with a significance of more than 4σ. These experimental data on cosmic ray positrons show that, at high energies, they predominantly originate either from dark matter annihilation or from new astrophysical sources.

Secondary track (number) 09

Primary author

Zhili Weng (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (US))

Presentation materials