Francesco Saverio Cafagna

Isotope composition of secondary hydrogen and helium above the atmosphere measured by the instruments NINA and NINA‐2

[1]xa0In this paper we report on the energy spectra and abundance ratios of hydrogen and helium isotopes of albedo origin, measured by the instruments NINA and NINA-2 in near-equatorial regions. The instrument NINA flew on board the satellite Resurs-01-N4 between 1998 and 1999, at a 830 km average altitude. The NINA-2 apparatus, on board the satellite MITA, was put into orbit in July 2000 at an altitude of about 450 km. NINA and NINA-2 measurements revealed that 2H, 3H, 3He, and 4He are a significant portion of the secondary flux above the atmosphere. The energy spectra of hydrogen isotopes are practically flat across the energy range of 10–40 MeV/n, while the spectra of helium isotopes can be fitted by a power law of spectral indexes γ = 0.8 and γ = 1.5 for 3He and 4He, respectively.

Geomagnetically trapped light isotopes observed with the detector NINA

[1]xa0The detector New Instrument for Nuclear Analysis (NINA) aboard the satellite Resurs-01-N4 detected hydrogen and helium isotopes geomagnetically trapped, while crossing the South Atlantic Anomaly. Deuterium and tritium at L shell < 1.2 were unambiguously recognized. The 3He and 4He power law spectra, reconstructed at L shell = 1.2 and B < 0.22 G, have indices equal to 2.30 ± 0.08 in the energy range 12–50 MeV nucleon−1 and 3.4 ± 0.2 in 10–30 MeV nucleon−1, respectively. The measured 3He/4He ratio and the reconstructed deuterium profile as a function of L shell bring one to the conclusion that the main source of radiation belt light isotopes at Resurs altitudes (∼800 km) and for energy greater than 10 MeV nucleon−1 is the interaction of trapped protons with residual atmospheric helium.

A transition radiation detector prototype to measure the energy of muons in cosmic ray laboratories

Abstract We have developed and tested a transition radiation detector prototype suitable to measure the energy of muons in cosmic ray laboratories. The technical solutions adopted, based on extruded tubes as detectors and foam or fiber mats as radiators, allow to cover very large areas with a low number of channels and ensure stability of operation. Using an argon-carbon dioxide gas mixture it is possible to explore the muon energy range up to 1 TeV.

Cosmic-ray discrimination capabilities of ΔE–E silicon nuclear telescopes using neural networks

Abstract An isotope classifier of cosmic-ray events collected by space detectors has been implemented using a multi-layer perceptron neural architecture. In order to handle a great number of different isotopes a modular architecture of the “mixture of experts” type is proposed. The performance of this classifier has been tested on simulated data and has been compared with a “classical” classifying procedure. The quantitative comparison with traditional techniques shows that the neural approach has classification performances comparable – within 1% – with that of the classical one, with efficiency of the order of 98% . A possible hardware implementation of such a kind of neural architecture in future space missions is considered.