Scintillating fibers and their use in the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS) on the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE)

• Published in: AIP conference proceedings Vol. 450; no. 1
• Main Authors: Binns, W. R., Dowkontt, P. F., Epstein, J. E., Hink, P. L., Klarmann, J., Lijowski, M., Olevitch, M. A., Christian, E. R., Rosenvinge, T. T. von, Cook, W. R., Cummings, A. C., Kecman, B., Leske, R. A., Mewaldt, R. A., Stone, E. C., Thayer, M. R., Dougherty, B. L., Wiedenbeck, M. E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 09.11.1998
• Subjects: COSMIC NUCLEI; COSMIC RAY DETECTION; EXPLORER SATELLITES; HODOSCOPES; INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY; ISOTOPE RATIO; MASS RESOLUTION; MEV RANGE; MULTIPARTICLE SPECTROMETERS; OPTICAL FIBERS; PARTICLE TRACKS; SI SEMICONDUCTOR DETECTORS; SOLID SCINTILLATION DETECTORS; SPATIAL RESOLUTION
• ISSN: 0094-243X; 1551-7616
• DOI: 10.1063/1.56988

The Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS) experiment was launched aboard the NASA Advanced Composition Explorer satellite on August 25, 1997. The experimental objective of CRIS is to measure the isotopic composition of galactic cosmic ray nuclei for elements with charge 3<Z<28 over the energy range {approx}50-500 MeV/nuc. The instrument consists of a scintillating fiber hodoscope to determine particle trajectory, and four stacks of silicon wafers for multiple dE/dx and E{sub tot} measurements. This instrument is the first to use scintillating fibers in space. The CRIS instrument has a large geometrical factor of {approx}250 cm{sup 2} sr. The spatial resolution obtained by the fiber hodoscope is {approx}100 {mu}m. The mass resolution achieved is {approx}0.12 amu for Carbon and 0.30 amu for the heaviest isotopes measured. Mass histograms of selected isotopes are presented.