First Results from the PAMELA Space Mission

Abstract

On the 15th of June 2006, the PAMELA satellite-borne experiment was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome and it has been collecting data since July 2006. The apparatus comprises a time-of-flight system, a silicon-microstrip magnetic spectrometer, a silicon-tungsten electromagnetic calorimeter, an anticoincidence system, a shower tail counter scintillator and a neutron detector. The combination of these devices allows precision studies of the charged cosmic radiation to be conducted over a wide energy range (100 MeV - 100's GeV) with high statistics. The primary scientific goal is the measurement of the antiproton and positron energy spectrum in order to search for exotic sources, such as dark matter particle annihilations. PAMELA is also searching for primordial antinuclei (anti-helium), and testing cosmic-ray propagation models through precise measurements of the antiparticle energy spectrum and precision studies of light nuclei and their isotopes. We review the status of the apparatus and present preliminary results concerning antiparticle measurements and dark-matter indirect searches.

Parallel talk at ICHEP08, Philadelphia, USA, July 2008. 5 pages, LaTeX, 3 eps figures

References in corpus (1)

• PAMELA - A Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Phenomenology of $U(1{)}_{L_{\mu }-L_{\tau }}$ charged dark matter at PAMELA/FERMI and colliders
• Effect of Black Holes in Local Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies on Gamma-Ray Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation
• Neutralino Dark Matter in the USSM
• Eight-channel reconfigurable microring filters with tunable frequency, extinction ratio and bandwidth
• New Constraints from PAMELA anti-proton data on Annihilating and Decaying Dark Matter
• High energy cosmic rays
• Cosmic ray propagation time scales: lessons from radioactive nuclei and positron data
• Low Energy INTEGRAL Positrons from eXciting Dark Matter