The HEPD apparatus for the CSES mission

B Panico ,R Sparvoli,F Palma,S Bartocci,I Rashevskaya,G Masciantonio,G Castellini,L Conti,F Perfetto,G Ambrosi,M Lolli,L Marcelli,V Scotti,M Ricci,I Lazzizzera,A Contin,B Spataro,L Patrizii,C De Donato,C Guadalini,C Manea,R Battiston,Michele Sposito ,М Мерге ,Alessandro Sotgiu ,F M Follega ,Lorenzo Pacini ,W J Burger ,G Laurenti,V Vitale,R Iuppa,F Palmonari,P Picozza,M Ionica,G Osteria,C De Santis,P Cipollone,M Pozzato,E Ricci,S Ricciarini

doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1342/1/012125

Abstract

The High-Energy Particle Detector (HEPD) is one of the payloads of the CSES space mission. The HEPD is built by the Italian Limadou collaboration and has different goals. It will study the temporal stability of the inner Van Allen radiation belts, the precipitation of trapped particles in the atmosphere and the low energy component of the cosmic rays (5-100 MeV for electrons and 15 - 300 MeV for protons). It has been tested at the Beam Test Facility of the INFN National Laboratory of Frascati, for electrons, and at the Proton Cyclotron of Trento, for protons. Here is presented a study of the performance of the apparatus to separate electrons and protons and identify nuclei up to iron.

Highlights

The trigger plane, which is divided into 6 segments;
In May 2017, the detector was tested at the Beam Test Facility (BTF) of the ‘Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati’ of INFN with an electron/positron beam with energy between 30 and 120 MeV [5]
In October 2017, the detector was tested at the Proton Cyclotron of Trento with proton beams with energy included into the range [70-200] MeV

Summary

The High-Energy Particle Detector

CSES is a Chinese space mission with different goals [1]: • the measurement of signals from electromagnetic emission in ionosphere; • the measurement of background magnetic field in space; • the cosmic ray measurements in an energy range up to few hundreds of MeV. The satellite will be placed in a 97,4◦ inclination Sun-synchronous circular orbit, at an altitude of ∼500 km. The High-Energy Particle Detector (HEPD) is one of the payloads of CSES. It is built by the Italian collaboration Limadou. It is developed to study protons and electrons in the energy range [3-200] MeV [2]. HEPD is composed by different instruments [3]: • a tracker, made of two planes of double-side silicon micro-strip sensors; • the trigger plane, which is divided into 6 segments; • a calorimeter, composed by 16 plastic scintillators with dimensions (15x15x1) cm3 and a layer of 9 LYSO cubes, for a resulting plane of dimension (15x15x4) cm3; • a scintillator veto system, 5 mm thick, at sides and at the bottom of the instrument.

Test beams

Conclusions and Acknowledgements