General antiparticle spectrometer

General antiparticle spectrometer (GAPS) is a planned experiment that will use a high-altitude balloon flying in Antarctica to look for antideuteron particles from outer space cosmic rays,[1] in an effort to search for dark matter. Anti-deuterons could perhaps be produced by the annihilation of hypothetical weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs).[2] The goal of the GAPS experiment is to capture anti-deuterons in a target material, to form an exotic atom in an excited state. The exotic atom would quickly decay, producing detectable X-rays energies with pion signature from nuclear annihilation.[3]

The GAPS ground test was successfully using a particle accelerator at KEK in 2004 and 2005. The first high-altitude balloon test was done in June 2012 with six Si(Li) detectors.

GAPS team

The team includes:[4]

  • Columbia University T. Aramaki, C.J. Hailey (P.I.), N. Madden, K. Mori, Florian Gahbauer
  • University of California, San Diego S.E. Boggs
  • University of California, Los Angeles R.A. Ong, J. Zweerink, S. A. I. Mognet
  • University of Hawaii P. Von Doetinchem
  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory W.W. Craig
  • Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency – Institute of Space & Astronautical Science, N. Bando, H. Fuke, T. Yoshida
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology K. Perez

References

  1. ^ Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Review of the theoretical and experimental status of dark matter identi cation with cosmic-ray antideuterons
  2. ^ Donato, Fiorenza; Fornengo, Nicolao; Salati, Pierre (July 2000). "Antideuterons as a signature of supersymmetric dark matter". Physical Review D. 62 (4): 043003. arXiv:hep-ph/9904481. doi:10.1103/physrevd.62.043003. S2CID 54873919.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link)
  3. ^ Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Antideuteron Sensitivity for the GAPS Experiment
  4. ^ UCLA, Cosmic-ray Cosmic-ray antideuteron searches antideuteron searches, Feb. 2016

Further reading

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