High-energy astroparticle physics with CALET

The CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) will be installed on the Exposure Facility of the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM-EF) on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2014 where it will measure the cosmic-ray fluxes for five years. Its main scientific goals are to search for dark matter, investigate the mechanism of cosmic-ray acceleration and propagation in the Galaxy and discover possible astrophysical sources of high-energy electrons nearby the Earth. The instrument, under construction, consists of two layers of segmented plastic scintillators for the cosmic-ray charge identification (CHD), a 3 X$_0$-thick tungsten-scintillating fiber imaging calorimeter (IMC) and a 27 X$_0$-thick lead-tungstate calorimeter (TASC). The CHD can provide single-element separation in the interval of atomic number Z from 1 to 40, while IMC and TASC can measure the energy of cosmic-ray particles with excellent resolution in the range from few GeV up to several hundreds of TeV. Moreover, IMC and TASC provide the longitudinal and lateral development of the shower, a key issue for good electron/hadron discrimination. In this paper, we will review the status of the mission, the instrument configuration and its expected performance, and the CALET capability to measure the different components of the cosmic radiation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the proceedings for the 23rd European Cosmic Ray Symposium 3-7 July 2012, Moscow, Russi

Cosmic rays: direct measurements

This paper is based on the rapporteur talk given at the 34$^{th}$ International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC), on August 6$^{th}$, 2015. The purpose of the talk and paper is to provide a summary of the most recent results from balloon-borne and space-based experiments presented at the conference, and give an overview of the future missions and developments foreseen in this field.Comment: Write-up of the rapporteur talk given at the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference, 30 July-6 August, 2015, The Hague, The Netherlands. 24 pages , 11 figure

Observation of charm mixing at CDF

We report on the observation of $D^0$--$\bar{D}^0$ oscillations by measuring the time-dependent ratio of yields for the rare decay $D^0 \rightarrow K^+\pi^-$ to the favored decay $D^0 \rightarrow K^-\pi^+$ at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). Using 9.6 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity of $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.96 TeV $p$$\bar{p}$ collisions recorded in the full CDF Run II, the signals of $7.6 \times 10^6$ $D^0\rightarrow K^-\pi^+$ and $33 \times 10^3$ $D^0\rightarrow K^+\pi^-$ decays are reconstructed in $D^{*}$-tagged events, with proper decay times between 0.75 and 10 mean $D^0$ lifetimes. We measure the mixing parameters $x'^2 = (0.08 \pm 0.18)\times 10^{-3}$, $y' = (4.3 \pm 4.3) \times 10^{-3}$, and $R_D = (3.51 \pm 0.35) \times 10^{-3}$. Our results are consistent with standard model expectations and similar results from proton-proton collisions and exclude the no-mixing hypothesis with a significance equivalent to 6.1 standard deviations.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Contribution to the proceedings for the 14th International Conference on B-Physics at Hadron Machines, April 8-12, 2013, Bologna, Ital