From SuperTIGER to TIGERISS

Date

2024-01-11

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Rauch, B. F., W. V. Zober, Q. Abarr, Y. Akaike, W. R. Binns, R. F. Borda, R. G. Bose, et al. “From SuperTIGER to TIGERISS.” Instruments 8, no. 1 (March 2024): 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/instruments8010004.

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

Abstract

The Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (TIGER) family of instruments is optimized to measure the relative abundances of the rare, ultra-heavy galactic cosmic rays (UHGCRs) with atomic number (Z) Z ≥ 30. Observing the UHGCRs places a premium on exposure that the balloon-borne SuperTIGER achieved with a large area detector (5.6 m²) and two Antarctic flights totaling 87 days, while the smaller (∼1 m²) TIGER for the International Space Station (TIGERISS) aims to achieve this with a longer observation time from one to several years. SuperTIGER uses a combination of scintillator and Cherenkov detectors to determine charge and energy. TIGERISS will use silicon strip detectors (SSDs) instead of scintillators, with improved charge resolution, signal linearity, and dynamic range. Extended single-element resolution UHGCR measurements through ₈₂Pb will cover elements produced in s-process and r-process neutron capture nucleosynthesis, adding to the multi-messenger effort to determine the relative contributions of supernovae (SNe) and Neutron Star Merger (NSM) events to the r-process nucleosynthesis product content of the galaxy.