Thursday, March 15, 2012, 16:00
WHGA/001
M. Pohl, University of Geneva
Abstract:
Even 100 years after the discovery of cosmic rays, our knowledge about
their composition, origin and transport remains
incomplete. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS is an instrument
dedicated to long-term investigations of cosmic rays (and high
energy photons) in near Earth orbit. It serves to exhaustively register,
identify and analyze them in the energy range from 1 GeV
to around 200 TeV. It will also allow to search for rare, non-standard
components, like residual antimatter and signals of dark
matter. The instrument resembles a slice through a modern collider
experiment, with particle identification devices assembled
around a magnetic spectrometer. It was installed on the International
Space Station in May 2011 and successfully takes data since
then. Until now, about 13 billion cosmic rays have been registered.
While calibration of the detector is still in progress, data
on the performance in orbit will be presented. Very preliminary results
concerning the identification and spectrum of heavy
nuclei will be discussed.