The PAMELA Time-of-Flight system: status report

Abstract The PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) satellite-borne experiment, scheduled to be launched in 2003, aboard a Soyuz TM2 rocket, is designed to provide a better understanding of the antimatter component of cosmic rays. In the following we report on the features and performances of its scintillator telescope system which will provide the primary experimental trigger and time-of-flight particle identification

www.elsevier.tiocate/npe Towards the Energy Spectrum and Composition of Primary Cosmic Rays in the Knee Region: Methods and Results at KASCADE

KASCADE (KArlsruhe Shower Core and Array DEtector) is a multi-detector setup to observe the electro-magnetic, muonic and hadronic air shower components simultaneously at primary energies in the region of the “knee”. A large number of observables per single shower are registered. The main aims of the experiment are the determination of the primary energy spectrum around the “knee ” and the energy variation of the chemical composition. The measurements reveal an increasing mean mass of the primary cosmic rays above the observed kink, and a sharper knee for the light primary component than for the all-particle spectrum, and the absence of a knee for the heavy component between 1 and 10 PeV. 1