Deuteron spectrum measurements under radiation belt with PAMELA instrument

Abstract In this work the results of data analysis of the deuteron albedo radiation obtained in the PAMELA experiment are presented. PAMELA is an international space experiment carried out on board of the satellite Resurs DK-1. The high precision detectors allow to register and identify cosmic ray particles in a wide energy range. The albedo deuteron spectrum in the energy range 70 – 600 MeV/nucleon has been measured

Cosmic rays studies with the PAMELA space experiment

The instrument PAMELA, in orbit since June 15th, 2006 on board the Russian satellite Resurs DK1, is delivering to ground 16 Gigabytes of data per day. The apparatus is designed to study charged particles in the cosmic radiation, with a particular focus on antiparticles as a possible signature of dark matter annihilation in the galactic halo; the combination of a magnetic spectrometer and different detectors—indeed—allows antiparticles to be reliably identified from a large background of other charged particles. New results on the antiproton-to-proton and positron-to-all-electron ratios over a wide energy range (1–100GeV) have been recently released by the PAMELA Collaboration, and will be summarized in this paper. While the antiproton-to-proton ratio does not show particular differences from an antiparticle standard secondary production, in the positron-to-all-electron ratio an enhancement is clearly seen at energies above 10 GeV. Possible interpretations of this effect will be briefly discussed

The PAMELA space mission

The PAMELA (a Payload for Antimatter-Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) space mission has been launched on-board the Resurs-DK1 satellite on June 15th 2006 from the Baikonur cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan. PAMELA is a particle spectrometer designed to study charged particles in the cosmic radiation with special focus on the investigation of the nature of dark matter, by mean of the measure of the cosmic-ray antiproton and positron spectra over the largest energy range ever achieved. © 2009

A statistical procedure for the identification of positrons in the PAMELA experiment

International audienceThe PAMELA satellite experiment has measured the cosmic-ray positron fraction between 1.5 GeV and 100 GeV. The need to reliably discriminate between the positron signal and proton background has required the development of an ad hoc analysis procedure. In this paper, a method for positron identification is described and its stability and capability to yield a correct background estimate is shown. The analysis includes new experimental data, the application of three different fitting techniques for the background sample and an estimate of systematic uncertainties due to possible inaccuracies in the background selection. The new experimental results confirm both solar modulation effects on cosmic-rays with low rigidities and an anomalous positron abundance above 10 GeV

Anisotropy studies in the cosmic ray proton flux with the PAMELA experiment

Using data taken by the Pamela experiment during 5 years of operation we studied the anisotropy in the arrival direction distribution of cosmic ray protons with rigidity above 40 GV. In this survey we used two different and independent techniques to investigate the large and medium anisotropy patterns in the proton spectrum. With both methods the observed distribution of arrival directions is consistent with the isotropic expectation and no significant evidence of strong anisotropies has been observed