A. Surdo

High altitude test of RPCs for the Argo YBJ experiment

Abstract A 50 m 2 RPC carpet was operated at the YanBaJin Cosmic Ray Laboratory (Tibet) located 4300 m a.s.l. The performance of RPCs in detecting Extensive Air Showers was studied. Efficiency and time-resolution measurements at the pressure and temperature conditions typical of high mountain laboratories, are reported.A 50 m**2 RPC carpet was operated at the YangBaJing Cosmic Ray Laboratory (Tibet) located 4300 m a.s.l. The performance of RPCs in detecting Extensive Air Showers was studied. Efficiency and time resolution measurements at the pressure and temperature conditions typical of high mountain laboratories, are reported.

Results from the ARGO-YBJ test experiment

Abstract A resistive plate counters (RPCs) carpet of ∼50 m 2 has been put in operation in the Yangbajing Laboratory (Tibet, P.R. China) at 4300 m a.s.l., in order to study the RPCs performance at high altitude and the detector capability of imaging the EAS disc. This test has been performed in view of an enlarged use of RPCs for the ARGO-YBJ experiment. This experiment will be devoted to a wide range of fundamental issues in cosmic rays and astroparticle physics, including in particular γ-ray astronomy and γ-ray bursts physics at energies ⩾100 GeV. In this paper we present and discuss the procedures adopted to calibrate the detector and reconstruct the shower direction. Results concerning many shower features as the angular distribution, the density spectrum, the time profile of the shower front, are found well consistent with the expectation.

The Trigger System of the ARGO-YBJ detector

Astrophysical radiation with ground-based observatory at YangBaJing (ARGO-YBJ) is a ground-based cosmic ray detector presently under construction at the Yangbajing High Altitude Cosmic Ray Laboratory (4300 m a.s.l.), Lhasa, Tibet. The apparatus has been designed to detect air showers with an energy threshold of a few hundred GeV and it has a total active area of 6400 m/sup 2/. The full-coverage central carpet of 5772 m/sup 2/ is equipped with an array of resistive plate counters. This array is surrounded by a partially instrumented guard ring to improve the reconstruction of showers with the core falling outside the carpet. The ARGO trigger logic implements simple yet robust algorithms, based on the timing distribution of the hits and their multiplicity on the central carpet. In this paper, we describe the hardware architecture and the main features of the trigger system.

Argo-ybj Observation of the Large-scale Cosmic ray Anisotropy During the Solar Minimum Between Cycles 23 and 24

This paper reports on the measurement of the large-scale anisotropy in the distribution of cosmic-ray arrival directions using the data collected by the air shower detector ARGO-YBJ from 2008 January to 2009 December, during the minimum of solar activity between cycles 23 and 24. In this period, more than 2 × 10 11 showers were recorded with energies between ∼1 and 30 TeV. The observed two-dimensional distribution of cosmic rays is characterized by two wide regions of excess and deficit, respectively, both of relative intensity ∼10 −3 with respect to a uniform flux, superimposed on smaller size structures. The harmonic analysis shows that the large-scale cosmic-ray relative intensity as a function of R.A. can be described by the first and second terms of a Fouries series. The high event statistics allow the study of the energy dependence of the anistropy, showing that the amplitude increases with energy, with a maximum intensity at ∼10 TeV, and then decreases while the phase slowly shifts toward lower values of R.A. with increasing energy. The ARGO-YBJ data provide accurate observations over more than a decade of energy around this feature of the anisotropy spectrum.

The use of RPC in the ARGO-YBJ project

We present the ARGO-YBJ experiment, a full coverage detector placed at high altitude (∼4300 m a.s.l.) that exploits the RPC technique. Results of a test experiment performed at Yanbajing site, with a full coverage RPC carpet of 50 m2 are also presented.

Cosmic ray proton plus helium energy spectrum measured by the ARGO-YBJ experiment in the energy range 3-300 TeV

The ARGO-YBJ experiment is a full-coverage air shower detector located at the Yangbajing Cosmic Ray Observatory (Tibet, Peoples Republic of China, 4300 m a.s.l.). The high altitude, combined with the full-coverage technique, allows the detection of extensive air showers in a wide energy range and offer the possibility of measuring the cosmic ray proton plus helium spectrum down to the TeV region, where direct balloon/space-borne measurements are available. The detector has been in stable data taking in its full configuration from November 2007 to February 2013. In this paper the measurement of the cosmic ray proton plus helium energy spectrum is presented in the region 3-300 TeV by analyzing the full collected data sample. The resulting spectral index is

Effects of nuclear re-interactions in quasi-elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering

\gamma = -2.64 \pm 0.01

Performance of the RPCs for the ARGO detector operated at the YangBaJing laboratory (4300 m a.s.l.)

. These results demonstrate the possibility of performing an accurate measurement of the spectrum of light elements with a ground based air shower detector.

The NOE detector for a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment

Abstract The effects of nuclear re-interactions in the quasi-elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering are investigated with a phenomenological model. We found that the nuclear responses are lowered and that their maxima are shifted towards higher excitation energies. This is reflected on the total ν-nucleus cross-section in a general reduction of about 15% for neutrino energies above 300 MeV.

The test results of the Silicon Tungsten Tracker of DAMPE

Bakelite RPCs, assembled according to the ARGO design, have been operated in the high altitude Laboratory of YBJ using dedicated electronics to pick-up the streamer signal. Here we report on the results concerning absorbed current, single counting rate, efficiency and time resolution. Environmental data concerning the operating temperature inside the ARGO experimental hall are also reported.