The development and performance of the EXAM detector to search for extragalactic antimatter
Thesis/Dissertation
·
OSTI ID:6256176
The design and development of a practical balloon borne instrument capable of detecting heavy (Z approximately equal to -26) antimatter in the cosmic rays are described. Emphasis is placed on describing the essential physics of the EXAM (extragalactic antimatter) instrument's individual detectors that make such a detection possible. In particular, it is shown that the responses from a plastic scintillator, a Cerenkov radiation detector, dielectric track detectors, and proportional drift tube arrays can be used to uniquely determine the speed, charge magnitude, and charge sign of a cosmic ray nucleus. This novel nonmagnetic detection scheme permits the construction of a relatively light weight (approximately 2,000 kg) detector with a large collecting power (approximately 10 sq m sr). The profound cosmological and elementary particle physics implications of the detection of just a single heavy antimatter nucleus are discussed in chapter one, along with arguments that imply that such a detected antinucleus must necessarily be extragalactic in origin. Chapters two through six describe the response of EXAM's individual detectors to the passage of heavily ionizing charged particles. Chapter seven is an overview of the mechanical construction of the entire instrument. Details of the measurement of the light collection efficiency of EXAM's Cerenkov detector and primary scintillator using sea-level muons and how this will be used to assist in the flight data analysis are contained in chapter eight. This chapter also includes a description of the instrument's electronic configuration and its data acquisition system. Finally, there are two appendices summarizing some important mechanical stress calculations that were required to actually build the instrument.
- Research Organization:
- California Univ., Berkeley, CA (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 6256176
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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