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

http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.07136


The ARGO-YBJ experiment is a full-coverage air shower detector located at the Yangbajing Cosmic Ray Observatory (Tibet, People’s 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.

Read this paper on arXiv…

YBJ. Collaboration-ARGO, B. Bartoli, P. Bernardini, et. al.
Wed, 25 Mar 15
25/38

Comments: 18 pages, 8 figures, preprint submitted to Phys. Rev. D