Extended Measurement of the Cosmic-Ray Electron and Positron Spectrum from 11 GeV to 4.8 TeV with the Calorimetric Electron Telescope on the International Space Station

TL;DR

This paper presents extended measurements of the cosmic-ray electron and positron spectrum from 11 GeV to 4.8 TeV using CALET on the ISS, providing new insights into high-energy cosmic-ray behavior and comparisons with other experiments.

Contribution

The study offers the most comprehensive spectrum measurement up to 4.8 TeV with improved statistics and detector acceptance, enhancing understanding of cosmic-ray electrons and positrons at high energies.

Findings

Spectrum below 1 TeV agrees with AMS-02 data.

Spectral index from 300 to 600 GeV is softer than Fermi-LAT and DAMPE.

No significant spectral feature observed around 1.4 TeV.

Abstract

Extended results on the cosmic-ray electron + positron spectrum from 11 GeV to 4.8 TeV are presented based on observations with the Calorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) on the International Space Station utilizing the data up to November 2017. The analysis uses the full detector acceptance at high energies, approximately doubling the statistics compared to the previous result. CALET is an all-calorimetric instrument with a total thickness of 30 $X_0$ at normal incidence and fine imaging capability, designed to achieve large proton rejection and excellent energy resolution well into the TeV energy region. The observed energy spectrum in the region below 1 TeV shows good agreement with Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) data. In the energy region below $\sim$300 GeV, CALET's spectral index is found to be consistent with the AMS-02, Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT) and Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), while from 300 to 600 GeV the spectrum is significantly softer than the spectra from the latter two experiments. The absolute flux of CALET is consistent with other experiments at around a few tens of GeV. However, it is lower than those of DAMPE and Fermi-LAT with the difference increasing up to several hundred GeV. The observed energy spectrum above $\sim$1 TeV suggests a flux suppression consistent within the errors with the results of DAMPE, while CALET does not observe any significant evidence for a narrow spectral feature in the energy region around 1.4 TeV. Our measured all-electron flux, including statistical errors and a detailed breakdown of the systematic errors, is tabulated in the Supplemental Material in order to allow more refined spectral analyses based on our data.