The cosmic ray proton plus helium energy spectrum measured by the ARGO-YBJ experiment in the energy range 3-300 TeV

The ARGO-YBJ experiment is a full-coverage air shower detector located at the Yangbajing Cosmic Ray Observatory (Tibet, Peoples Republic of China, 4300 m a.s.l.). The high altitude, combined with the full-coverage technique, allows the detection of extensive air showers in a wide energy range and offer the possibility of measuring the cosmic ray proton plus helium spectrum down to the TeV region, where direct balloon/space-borne measurements are available. The detector has been in stable data taking in its full configuration from November 2007 to February 2013. In this paper the measurement of the cosmic ray proton plus helium energy spectrum is presented in the region 3-300 TeV by analyzing the full collected data sample. The resulting spectral index is $gamma = -2.64 pm 0.01$. These results demonstrate the possibility of performing an accurate measurement of the spectrum of light elements with a ground based air shower detector.

The Cosmic Ray p+He energy spectrum in the 3-3000 TeV energy range measured by ARGO-YBJ

The ARGO-YBJ experiment is a full coverage air shower detector operated at the Yangbajing International Cosmic Ray Observatory. The detector has been in stable data taking in its full configuration since November 2007 to February 2013. The high altitude and the high segmentation and spacetime resolution offer the possibility to explore the cosmic ray energy spectrum in a very wide range, from a few TeV up to the PeV region. The high segmentation allows a detailed measurement of the lateral distribution, which can be used in order to discriminate showers produced by light and heavy elements. In this work we present the measurement of the cosmic ray light component spectrum in the energy range 3-3000 TeV. The analysis has been carried out by using a two-dimensional unfolding method based on the Bayes theorem.