Speaker
Description
The nature of dark matter is one of the great open questions in physics. The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) experiment is an Antarctic balloon mission optimized specifically for low energy (< 0.25 GeV/n) cosmic antinuclei as uniquely low-background signatures of dark matter. The secondary production of low-energy astrophysical antideuterons is strongly suppressed by the scarcity of high-energy cosmic rays and their relativistic kinematics, which predominantly produce high-energy products. Moreover, cosmic antideuterons have not yet been detected, therefore, any detection of antideuterons by GAPS would represent a potentially groundbreaking discovery. In addition, GAPS will deliver a high-statistics measurement of the antiproton spectrum in the 0.1 and 0.3 GeV/n energy range, below that of any other experiment, and provide unique sensitivity to cosmic antihelium. The GAPS experiment uses a novel exotic-atom-based technique to distinguish cosmic antinuclei from the abundant nuclei background without the need for a magnet. The GAPS payload consists of layers of plastic scintillator panels which make up the time-of-flight system and surround a 10-layer Si(Li) tracker. GAPS flew for the first time this past Antarctic summer, spending over 25 days at float altitude. I will be presenting an overview of the GAPS instrument and of the first flight campaign of GAPS.
| Main Contribution topic | Indirect detection |
|---|---|
| Secondary contribution topic | Instrumentation for Dark Matter |