Cosmic Ray Electron Synchrotron Telescope (CREST) Status Report
Abstract
The CREST instrument aims to detect cosmic electrons beyond a few TeV, which would likely originate in the local Galactic neighborhood, within a kpc or so, owing to their rapid energy loss rates during propagation. Only a few candidate acceleration sites exist within this horizon, such as Vela, Monogem, and the Cygnus Loop remnants, and thus multi-TeV electrons are a useful marker of the nearby high energy universe. CREST detects electrons through their geosynchrotron x-ray emissions in the South polar regions of the Earth. The signature is a stream of x-ray photons emitted in the plane of electron travel, intersecting the plane of a horizontal detector array; the net effect is a co-linear arrangement of x-ray hits coincident in time. To this end an array of 1024 BaF2 crystal detectors was built, surrounded by veto plastic scintillators to guard against chance alignments of charged particles in air showers. This instrument was successfully flown on a high-altitude balloon for 10 days in Antarctica, starting December 25, 2011, and recovered in February 2012. The status of the analysis of the data from this flight is presented.
- Publication:
-
International Cosmic Ray Conference
- Pub Date:
- 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013ICRC...33..315N
- Keywords:
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- cosmic rays;
- electrons;
- geosynchrotron radiation;
- balloons.