Direct Measurement of the Cosmic-Ray Carbon and Oxygen Spectra from 10  GeV/n to 2.2  TeV/n with the Calorimetric Electron Telescope on the International Space Station

Date

2020-12-18

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Adriani, O. et al. "Direct Measurement of the Cosmic-Ray Carbon and Oxygen Spectra from 10 GeV/n to 2.2 TeV/n with the Calorimetric Electron Telescope on the International Space Station." Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, no. 25 (18 December 2020). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.251102

Rights

This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain Mark 1.0

Subjects

Abstract

In this paper, we present the measurement of the energy spectra of carbon and oxygen in cosmic rays based on observations with the Calorimetric Electron Telescope on the International Space Station from October 2015 to October 2019. Analysis, including the detailed assessment of systematic uncertainties, and results are reported. The energy spectra are measured in kinetic energy per nucleon from 10 GeV / n to 2.2 TeV / n with an all-calorimetric instrument with a total thickness corresponding to 1.3 nuclear interaction length. The observed carbon and oxygen fluxes show a spectral index change of ∼0.15 around 200 GeV / n established with a significance > 3σ. They have the same energy dependence with a constant C/O flux ratio 0.911±0.006 above 25 GeV / n. The spectral hardening is consistent with that measured by AMS-02, but the absolute normalization of the flux is about 27% lower, though in agreement with observations from previous experiments including the PAMELA spectrometer and the calorimetric balloon-borne experiment CREAM.