The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) calorimeter is designed to measure the spectra of cosmic-ray particles over the energy range from ~10^11 eV to ~10^15 eV. Its first flight as part of the CREAM-I balloon-borne payload in Antarctica during the 2004/05 season resulted in a recordbreaking 42 days of exposure. Calorimeter calibration using various beam test data will be discussed in an attempt to assess the uncertainties of the energy measurements.
CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass) is a multi-flight balloon mission designed to collect direct data on the elemental composition and individual energy spectra of cosmic rays. Two instrument suites have been built to be flown alternately on a yea
rly base. The tungsten/Sci-Fi imaging calorimeter for the second flight, scheduled for December 2005, was calibrated with electron and proton beams at CERN. A calibration procedure based on the study of the longitudinal shower profile is described and preliminary results of the beam test are presented.
The CREAM calorimeter, designed to measure the spectra of cosmic-ray nuclei from under 1 TeV to 1000 TeV, is a 20 radiation length (X0) deep sampling calorimeter. The calorimeter is comprised of 20 layers of tungsten interleaved with 20 layers of sci
ntillating fiber ribbons, and is preceded by a pair of graphite interaction targets providing about 0.42 proton interaction lengths (lambda int). The calorimeter was placed in one of CERNs SPS accelerator beams for calibration and testing. Beams of 150 GeV electrons were used for calibration, and a variety of electron, proton, and nuclear fragment beams were used to test the simulation model of the detector. In this paper we discuss the performance of the calorimeter in the electron beam and compare electron beam data with simulation results.
The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) is a balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the composition and energy spectra of cosmic rays of charge Z = 1 to 26 up to an energy of ~ 10^15 eV. CREAM had two successful flights on long-duration ball
oons (LDB) launched from Mc- Murdo Station, Antarctica, in December 2004 and December 2005. CREAM-I achieves a substantial measurement redundancy by employing multiple detector systems, namely a Timing Charge Detector and a Silicon Charge Detector (SCD) for particle identification, and a Transition Radiation Detector and a sampling tungsten/scintillating-fiber ionization calorimeter (CAL) for energy measurement. In this paper, preliminary energy spectra of various elements measured with CAL/SCD during the first 42-day flight are presented.
The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) balloon experiment had two successful flights in 2004/05 and 2005/06. It was designed to perform energy measurements from a few GeV up to 1000 TeV, taking advantage of different detection techniques. The fir
st instrument, CREAM-1, combined a transition radiation detector with a calorimeter to provide independent energy measurements of cosmicraynuclei. Each detector was calibrated with particle beams in a limited range of energies. In order to assess the absolute energy scale of the instrument and to investigate the systematic effects of each technique, a cross-calibration was performed by comparing the two independent energy estimates on selected samples of oxygen and carbon nuclei.
The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass experiment for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM) was installed on the ISS to measure high-energy cosmic-ray elemental spectra for the charge range $rm Z=1$ to 26. The ISS-CREAM instrument includes a tungst
en scintillating-fiber calorimeter preceded by a carbon target for energy measurements. The carbon target induces hadronic interactions, and showers of secondary particles develop in the calorimeter. The energy deposition in the calorimeter is proportional to the particle energy. As a predecessor to ISS-CREAM, the balloon-borne CREAM instrument was successfully flown seven times over Antarctica for a cumulative exposure of 191 days. The CREAM calorimeter demonstrated its capability to measure energies of cosmic-ray particles, and the ISS-CREAM calorimeter is expected to have a similar performance. Before the launch, an engineering-unit calorimeter was shipped to CERN for calibration and performance tests. This beam test included position, energy, and angle scans of electron and pion beams together with a high-voltage scan for calibration and characterization. Additionally, an attenuation effect in the scintillating fibers was studied. In this paper, beam test results, including corrections for the attenuation effect, are presented.