AMS A particle observatory in space.pdfVIP

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 1 0 3 4 9 3 v 1 2 9 M a r 2 0 0 1 AMS : A PARTICLE OBSERVATORY IN SPACE Aure?lien Barrau Institut des Sciences Nuce?aires 53, av des Martyrs, 38026 Grenoble cedex, France Universite? Joseph Fourier, 38400 St Martin d’He?res, France AMS collaboration The expected physics and astrophysics capabilities of the AMS experiment on board the International Space Station are briefly reviewed. 1 Introduction The AMS spectrometer will be implemented on the International Space Station at the end of 2003 (or beginning of 2004). The instrument will be made of a superconducting magnet which inner volume will be mapped with a tracker consisting of 8 planes of silicon microstrips surrounded by several sub-detectors: a time-of-flight (TOF), a ring imaging Cherenkov (RICH), an electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL), a transition radiation detector (TRD) and, possibly, a synchrotron radiation detector (SRD). The expected performances will be reviewed together with the physics goals : high statistics study of cosmic rays in a wide range of energies, search for primordial antimatter, search for non-baryonic dark matter and, to some extent, gamma-ray astrophysics. A simplified version of the spectrometer has already been flown during a precursor flight (june 2-12, 1998) on the Space Shuttle Discovery. The technical success together with the first physics results and their interpretation will be briefly reviewed. 2 The spectrometer The AMS spectrometer Fig.1 will be based on a superconducting magnet which maximum field should be of the order of 1 Tesla, perpendicular to the axis of the cylinder. Its inner volume will be filled with 8 layers of double sided silicon tracker measuring the trajectory of Figure 1: the AMS spectrometer (to be implemented on the ISS) the charged particles and, therefore, their rigidity (from around 300 MV up to 3 TV). The time of flight system has its planes at each end of the magnet, covering the outer tracker layers. It provides