ICRC 2021

Cosmic-ray isotope measurements with HELIX

13 Jul 2021, 12:00

1h 30m

06

Talk CRD | Cosmic Ray Direct Discussion

Speaker

Nahee Park (Queen's University)

Description

Recent discoveries of new features in Galactic cosmic-ray fluxes emphasize the importance of understanding the propagation of cosmic rays. HELIX (High Energy Light Isotope eXperiment) is designed to improve the measurements of light cosmic-ray isotopes, including the propagation clock isotope ${}^{10}\mathrm{Be}$ and stable secondary isotope ${}^9\mathrm{Be}$, which will be essential to study the propagation of the cosmic rays. The magnetic spectrometer of HELIX consists of a 1 Tesla superconducting magnet containing a high-resolution gas drift chamber as a tracking detector and two velocity measuring detectors: a time-of-flight detector and a ring-imaging Cherenkov detector. While the HELIX instrument can measure the fluxes of the light isotopes from protons (Z=1) up to neon (Z=10), it is optimized to study the flux of beryllium isotopes from 0.2 GeV/n to beyond 3 GeV/n with a sufficient mass resolution to discriminate between ${}^{10}\mathrm{Be}$ and ${}^9\mathrm{Be}$. In this talk, I will review the scientific goals and the design of the instrument and report its current status and project plans.

Keywords

cosmic-ray; cosmic-ray isotopes; balloon experiment; cosmic-ray propagation; magnetic spectrometer

Presentation materials

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