The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is one of the four satellites within Strategic Pioneer Research Program in Space Science of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS). DAMPE can detect electrons, photons and ions in a wide energy range (5 GeV to 10 TeV) and ions up to iron (100GeV to 100 TeV). Plastic Scintillator Detector (PSD) is one of the four payloads in DAMPE, providing e/{gamma} separation and charge identification up to Iron. An ion beam test was carried out for the Qualification Model of PSD in CERN with 40GeV/u Argon primary beams. The Birks saturation and charge resolution of PSD were investigated.
he DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a general purposed satellite-borne high energy $gamma-$ray and cosmic ray detector, and among the scientific objectives of DAMPE are the searches for the origin of cosmic rays and an understanding of Dark Matter particles. As one of the four detectors in DAMPE, the Plastic Scintillator Detector (PSD) plays an important role in the particle charge measurement and the photons/electrons separation. The PSD has 82 modules, each consists of a long organic plastic scintillator bar and two PMTs at both ends for readout, in two layers and covers an overall active area larger than 82 cm $times$ 82 cm. It can identify the charge states for relativistic ions from H to Fe, and the detector efficiency for Z=1 particles can reach 0.9999. The PSD has been successfully launched with DAMPE on Dec. 17, 2015. In this paper, the design, the assembly, the qualification tests of the PSD and some of the performance measured on the ground have been described in detail.
The Plastic Scintillator Detector (PSD) of the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is designed to measure cosmic ray charge (Z) and to act as a veto detector for gamma-ray identification. In order to fully exploit the charge identification potential of the PSD and to enhance its capability to identify the gamma ray events, we develop a PSD detector alignment method. The path length of a given track in the volume of a PSD bar is derived taking into account the shift and rotation alignment corrections. By examining energy spectra of corner-passing events and fully contained events, position shifts and rotations of all PSD bars are obtained, and found to be on average about 1mm and 0.0015 radian respectively. To validate the alignment method, we introduce the artificial shifts and rotations of PSD bars in the detector simulation. These shift and rotation parameters can be recovered successfully by the alignment procedure. As a result of the PSD alignment procedure, the charge resolution of the PSD is improved from $4%$ to $8%$ depending on the nuclei.
One of the main purposes of the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is to measure the cosmic ray nuclei up to several tens of TeV or beyond, whose origin and propagation remains a hot topic in astrophysics. The Plastic Scintillator Detector (PSD) o
n top of DAMPE is designed to measure the charges of cosmic ray nuclei from H to Fe and serves as a veto detector for discriminating gamma-rays from charged particles. We propose in this paper a charge reconstruction procedure to optimize the PSD performance in charge measurement. Essentials of our approach, including track finding, alignment of PSD, light attenuation correction, quenching and equalization correction are described detailedly in this paper after a brief description of the structure and operational principle of the PSD. Our results show that the PSD works very well and almost all the elements in cosmic rays from H to Fe are clearly identified in the charge spectrum.
The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is one of the four satellites within the Strategic Pioneer Research Program in Space Science of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS). The Silicon-Tungsten Tracker (STK), which is composed of 768 singled-sided silicon microstrip detectors, is one of the four subdetectors in DAMPE, providing track reconstruction and charge identification for relativistic charged particles. The charge response of DAMPE silicon microstrip detectors is complicated, depending on the incident angle and impact position. A new charge reconstruction algorithm for the DAMPE silicon microstrip detector is introduced in this paper. This algorithm can correct the complicated charge response, and was proved applicable by the ion test beam.
PoGOLino is a balloon-borne scintillator-based experiment developed to study the largely unexplored high altitude neutron environment at high geomagnetic latitudes. The instrument comprises two detectors that make use of LiCAF, a novel neutron sensitive scintillator, sandwiched by BGO crystals for background reduction. The experiment was launched on March 20th 2013 from the Esrange Space Centre, Northern Sweden (geomagnetic latitude of $65^circ$), for a three hour flight during which the instrument took data up to an altitude of 30.9 km. The detector design and ground calibration results are presented together with the measurement results from the balloon flight.