Meaurement of Cosmic Ray elemental composition from the CAKE balloon experiment

TL;DR

This paper details the CAKE balloon experiment's methodology for measuring cosmic ray composition, including detector setup, data analysis algorithms, and resulting charge spectra for primary cosmic rays with Z>10.

Contribution

It introduces a novel passive detector setup and automated analysis techniques for cosmic ray charge identification in balloon experiments.

Findings

Charge spectra of primary cosmic rays obtained

Elemental abundances of cosmic rays measured

Automated tracking algorithms validated

Abstract

CAKE (Cosmic Abundances below Knee Energies) was a prototype balloon experiment for the determination of the charge spectra and of abundances of the primary cosmic-rays (CR) with Z$>$10. It was a passive instrument made of layers of CR39 and Lexan nuclear track detectors; it had a geometric acceptance of $\sim$0.7 m$^2$sr for Fe nuclei. Here, the scanning and analysis strategies, the algorithms used for the off-line filtering and for the tracking in automated mode of the primary cosmic rays are presented, together with the resulting CR charge distribution and their abundances.