A separation of electrons and protons in the GAMMA-400 gamma-ray telescope

TL;DR

The paper evaluates GAMMA-400's ability to distinguish electrons and positrons from protons, achieving a rejection factor of around 400,000 for energies between 50 GeV and 1 TeV, enhancing cosmic-ray measurements.

Contribution

It demonstrates the combined detector system's effectiveness in separating electrons/positrons from protons in the GAMMA-400 telescope, with a high rejection factor.

Findings

Proton rejection factor of ~4x10^5 for vertical incidence.

Proton rejection factor of ~3x10^5 at 30-degree inclination.

Effective electron-proton separation in the 50 GeV to 1 TeV range.

Abstract

The GAMMA-400 gamma-ray telescope is intended to measure the fluxes of gamma rays and cosmic-ray electrons and positrons in the energy range from 100 MeV to several TeV. Such measurements concern with the following scientific goals: search for signatures of dark matter, investigation of gamma-ray point and extended sources, studies of the energy spectra of Galactic and extragalactic diffuse emission, studies of gamma-ray bursts and gamma-ray emission from the active Sun, as well as high-precision measurements of spectra of high-energy electrons and positrons, protons, and nuclei up to the knee. The main components of cosmic rays are protons and helium nuclei, whereas the part of lepton component in the total flux is ~10E-3 for high energies. In present paper, the capability of the GAMMA-400 gamma-ray telescope to distinguish electrons and positrons from protons in cosmic rays is investigated. The individual contribution to the proton rejection is studied for each detector system of the GAMMA-400 gamma-ray telescope. Using combined information from all detector systems allow us to provide the proton rejection from electrons with a factor of ~4x10E5 for vertical incident particles and ~3x10E5 for particles with initial inclination of 30 degrees. The calculations were performed for the electron energy range from 50 GeV to 1 TeV.