Calibration and performance of the neutron detector onboard of the DAMPE mission

Abstract

The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), one of the four space-based scientific missions within the framework of the Strategic Pioneer Program on Space Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been successfully launched on Dec. 17th 2015 from Jiuquan launch center. One of the most important scientific goals of DAMPE is to search for the evidence of dark matter indirectly by measuring the spectrum of high energy cosmic-ray electrons. The neutron detector, one of the four sub-payloads of DAMPE, is designed to distinguish high energy electrons from hadron background by measuring the secondary neutrons produced in the shower. In this paper, a comprehensive introduction of the neutron detector is presented, including the design, the calibration and the performance. The analysis with simulated data and flight data indicates a powerful proton rejection capability of the neutron detector, which plays an essential role for TeV electron identification of DAMPE.

11pages,to be published in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics

References in corpus (4)

• Direct detection of a break in the teraelectronvolt cosmic-ray spectrum of electrons and positrons
• The cosmic-ray electron flux measured by the PAMELA experiment between 1 and 625 GeV
• The DArk Matter Particle Explorer mission
• The on-orbit calibration of DArk Matter Particle Explorer

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Measurement of the cosmic ray helium energy spectrum from 70 GeV to 80 TeV with the DAMPE space mission
• Observations of Forbush Decreases of cosmic ray electrons and positrons with the Dark Matter Particle Explorer
• A deep learning method for the trajectory reconstruction of cosmic rays with the DAMPE mission
• Correction Method for the Readout Saturation of the DAMPE Calorimeter
• Search for relativistic fractionally charged particles in space
• Study of the Global Alignment for the DAMPE Detector
• Machine learning-based method of calorimeter saturation correction for helium flux analysis with DAMPE experiment
• Hadronic cross section measurements with the DAMPE space mission using 20GeV-10TeV cosmic-ray protons and ${}^4$He
• PSF Calibration of DAMPE for gamma-ray Observations
• A Study on Monte Carlo simulation of the radiation environment above GeV at the DAMPE orbit
• The calibrations of DAMPE $\gamma$-ray effective area
• Energy Reconstruction of Non-fiducial Electron-Positron Events in the DAMPE Experiment Using Convolutional Neural Networks
• Diverse properties of electron Forbush decreases revealed by the Dark Matter Particle Explorer
• Investigation of hadronic cross sections of cosmic ray carbon and oxygen on BGO from 200 GeV to 10 TeV energy at the DAMPE experiment