Monte Carlo Simulation of HERD Calorimeter

TL;DR

This paper presents simulation results of a high-granularity 3-D calorimeter for the HERD space facility, demonstrating its capabilities in precise energy measurement, particle identification, and broad sky coverage for cosmic and gamma-ray observations.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation study of HERD's calorimeter using GEANT4 and FLUKA, highlighting its design performance and scientific potential.

Findings

Energy resolution: 1% for electrons/gamma-rays >100 GeV

Electron/proton separation power better than 10^-5

Large effective geometrical factor for wide sky coverage

Abstract

The High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection (HERD) facility onboard China's Space Station is planned for operation starting around 2020 for about 10 years. It is designed as a next generation space facility focused on indirect dark matter search, precise cosmic ray spectrum and composition measurements up to the knee energy, and high energy gamma-ray monitoring and survey. The calorimeter plays an essential role in the main scientific objectives of HERD. A 3-D cubic calorimeter filled with high granularity crystals as active material is a very promising choice for the calorimeter. HERD is mainly composed of a 3-D calorimeter (CALO) surrounded by silicon trackers (TK) from all five sides except the bottom. CALO is made of 9261 cubes of LYSO crystals, corresponding to about 55 radiation lengths and 3 nuclear interaction lengths, respectively. Here the simulation results of the performance of CALO with GEANT4 and FLUKA are presented: 1) the total absorption CALO and its absorption depth for precise energy measurements (energy resolution: 1\% for electrons and gamma-rays beyond 100 GeV, 20\% for protons from 100 GeV to 1 PeV); 2) its granularity for particle identification (electron/proton separation power better than $10^{-5}$); 3) the homogenous geometry for detecting particles arriving from every unblocked direction for large effective geometrical factor ($>$3 ${\rm m}^{2}{\rm sr}$ for electron and diffuse gamma-rays, $>$2 $ {\rm m}^{2}{\rm sr}$ for cosmic ray nuclei); 4) expected observational results such as gamma-ray line spectrum from dark matter annihilation and spectrum measurement of various cosmic ray chemical components.