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arXiv · 1810.09901

Calibration of the DAMPE Plastic Scintillator Detector and its on-orbit performance

Meng Ding·Yapeng Zhang·Yong-Jie Zhang·Yuan-Peng Wang·Tie-Kuang Dong·Antonio De Benedittis·Paolo Bernardini·Fang Fang·Yao Li·Jie Liu·Peng-Xiong Ma·Zhi-Yu Sun·Valentina Gallo·Stefania Vitillo·Zhao-Min Wang·Yu-Hong Yu·Chuan Yue·Qiang Yuan·Yong Zhou·Yun-Long Zhang
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Abstract

DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a space-borne apparatus for detecting the high-energy cosmic-rays like electrons, $\gamma$-rays, protons and heavy-ions. Plastic Scintillator Detector (PSD) is the top-most sub-detector of the DAMPE. The PSD is designed to measure the charge of incident high-energy particles and it also serves as a veto detector for discriminating $\gamma$-rays from charged particles. In this paper, PSD on-orbit calibration procedure is described, which includes five steps of pedestal, dynode correlation, response to minimum-ionizing particles (MIPs), light attenuation function and energy reconstruction. A method for reconstructing the charge of incident high energy cosmic-ray particles is introduced. The detection efficiency of each PSD strip is verified to be above 99.5%, the total efficiency of the PSD for charged particles is above 99.99%.

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Meng Ding, Yapeng Zhang, Yong-Jie Zhang, Yuan-Peng Wang, Tie-Kuang Dong, Antonio De Benedittis, Paolo Bernardini, Fang Fang, Yao Li, Jie Liu, Peng-Xiong Ma, Zhi-Yu Sun, Valentina Gallo, Stefania Vitillo, Zhao-Min Wang, Yu-Hong Yu, Chuan Yue, Qiang Yuan, Yong Zhou, Yun-Long Zhang. 2018-10-23. Calibration of the DAMPE Plastic Scintillator Detector and its on-orbit performance. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/19/3/47

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