SuperTIGER and the hunt for for Galactic Cosmic-Ray Origins

by Dr John E Ward (IFAE)

Wednesday May 28, 2014, 1:00 PM → 2:00 PM Europe/Madrid

Seminar (IFAE)

SuperTIGER is a large-area (5.4 m^2) instrument that was successfully launched from Williams Field, McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on Dec. 9, 2012 on a long-duration balloon flight and flew for a total of 55 days. It measured cosmic-ray nuclei in the charge interval 29 <= Z <= 42 with individual element resolution and high statistical precision, and made exploratory measurements through Z = 56. These measurements will provide sensitive tests of the emerging model of cosmic-ray origins in OB associations and models of the mechanism for selection of nuclei for acceleration. Particle charge and energy were measured with a combination of plastic scintillators (to measure dE/dX), acrylic and silica-aerogel Cherenkov detectors (to measure particle velocity), and a scintillating fiber hodoscope (to measure particle trajectory). Details of the SuperTIGER science goals, flight, instrument performance and preliminary results will be presented.

Slides IFAE_May2014_Reduced.pdf