Searching for cosmic antihelium nuclei with the GAPS experiment

GAPS Collaboration

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Abstract

At low energies, cosmic antideuterons and antihelium provide an ultra-low background signature of dark matter annihilation, decay, and other beyond the Standard Model phenomena. The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is an Antarctic balloon experiment designed to search for low-energy (0.1−0.3 GeV/n) antinuclei, and is planned to launch in the austral summer of 2022. While optimized for an antideuteron search, GAPS also has unprecedented capabilites for the detection of low-energy antihelium nuclei, utilizing a novel detection technique based on the formation, decay, and annihilation of exotic atoms. The AMS-02 collaboration has recently reported several antihelium nuclei candidate events, which sets GAPS in a unique position to set constraints on the cosmic antihelium flux in an energy region which is essentially free of astrophysical background. In this contribution, we illustrate the capabilities of GAPS to search for cosmic antihelium-3 utilizing complete instrument simulations, event reconstruction, and the inclusion of atmospheric effects. We show that GAPS is capable of setting unprecedented limits on the cosmic antihelium flux, opening a new window on exotic cosmic physics.

Original languageEnglish
Article number499
JournalProceedings of Science
Volume395
StatePublished - Mar 18 2022
Event37th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2021 - Virtual, Berlin, Germany
Duration: Jul 12 2021Jul 23 2021

Funding

This work is supported in the U.S. by NASA APRA grants (NNX17AB44G, NNX17AB45G, NNX17AB46G, and NNX17AB47G), in Japan by JAXA/ISAS Small Science Program FY2017, and in Italy by Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and the Italian Space Agency through ASI INFN agreement No. 2018-28-HH.0: “Partecipazione italiana al GAPS - General AntiParticle Spectrometer”. F. Rogers is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1122374. P. von Doetinchem received support from the National Science Foundation under award PHY-1551980. H. Fuke is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grants (JP17H01136 and JP19H05198) and Mitsubishi Foundation Research Grant 2019-10038. K. Perez and M. Xiao are supported by Heising-Simons award 2018-0766. Y. Shimizu receives support from JSPS KAKENHI grant JP20K04002 and Sumitomo Foundation Grant No. 180322. Technical support and advanced computing resources from the University of Hawaii Information Technology Services – Cyberinfrastructure are gratefully acknowledged. This research was done using resources provided by the Open Science Grid [21, 22], which is supported by the National Science Foundation award #2030508.

FundersFunder number
ASI INFN
National Science Foundation1122374, PHY-1551980
National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationNNX17AB47G, NNX17AB46G, NNX17AB45G, NNX17AB44G
Sumitomo Foundation180322, 2030508
Japan Society for the Promotion of ScienceJP17H01136, JP19H05198
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
Mitsubishi Foundation2019-10038, 2018-0766, JP20K04002
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science

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