Electron–proton separation in calorimetry experiments directly measuring the composition and energy spectrum of cosmic rays

Abstract

Calorimetric particle detectors that play an important role in high-energy cosmic-ray balloon and satellite experiments not only have the major task of measuring energy but also face the problem of identifying electrons and protons. This problem is usually solved by measuring the longitudinal and traverse shower profiles and the total energy release in the calorimeter, using the fact that electromagnetic and hadronic showers differ in their spatial and energy distributions. In this paper, electron and proton identification methods for different types of calorimeters used in cosmic-ray balloon- and satellite-borne experiments are discussed.