Charge Measurement of Cosmic Ray Nuclei with the Plastic Scintillator Detector of DAMPE

TL;DR

This paper details a charge reconstruction method for DAMPE's Plastic Scintillator Detector, enhancing cosmic ray nuclei identification from hydrogen to iron, crucial for astrophysics research on cosmic ray origins.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive charge reconstruction procedure for the PSD, improving charge measurement accuracy and element identification in cosmic ray detection.

Findings

PSD effectively identifies cosmic ray elements from H to Fe

Charge spectrum shows clear separation of elements

Optimized charge measurement enhances astrophysics studies

Abstract

One of the main purposes of the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is to measure the cosmic ray nuclei up to several tens of TeV or beyond, whose origin and propagation remains a hot topic in astrophysics. The Plastic Scintillator Detector (PSD) on top of DAMPE is designed to measure the charges of cosmic ray nuclei from H to Fe and serves as a veto detector for discriminating gamma-rays from charged particles. We propose in this paper a charge reconstruction procedure to optimize the PSD performance in charge measurement. Essentials of our approach, including track finding, alignment of PSD, light attenuation correction, quenching and equalization correction are described detailedly in this paper after a brief description of the structure and operational principle of the PSD. Our results show that the PSD works very well and almost all the elements in cosmic rays from H to Fe are clearly identified in the charge spectrum.