Hadronic cross section measurements with the DAMPE space mission using 20GeV-10TeV cosmic-ray protons and ${}^4$He

Abstract

Precise direct cosmic-ray (CR) measurements provide an important probe to study the energetic particle sources in our Galaxy, and the interstellar environment through which these particles propagate. Uncertainties on hadronic models, ion-nucleon cross sections in particular, are currently the limiting factor towards obtaining more accurate CR ion flux measurements with calorimetric space-based experiments. We present an energy-dependent measurement of the inelastic cross section of protons and helium-4 nuclei (alpha particles) on a Bi${}_4$Ge${}_3$O${}_{12}$ target, using 88 months of data collected by the DAMPE space mission. The kinetic energy range per nucleon of the measurement points ranges from 18 GeV to 9 TeV for protons, and from 5 GeV/n to 3 TeV/n for helium-4 nuclei. Our results lead to a significant improvement of the CR flux normalisation. In the case of helium-4, these results correspond to the first cross section measurements on a heavy target material at energies above 10 GeV/n.

arXiv commentPublished in PRD

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Investigation of hadronic cross sections of cosmic ray carbon and oxygen on BGO from 200 GeV to 10 TeV energy at the DAMPE experiment