Search for antideuterons and strangelets in cosmic rays with AMS-01

AMS (the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) is a high-energy particle detector in space. An engineer- ing version of AMS, AMS-01, flew on the space shuttle Discovery for ten days in June 1998 and collected 108 cosmic ray events. This thesis extends the previous results of the AMS-01 flight by performing a search for antideuterons (⁻D) in cosmic rays. Antideuterons in cosmic rays could be a signal for neutralino dark matter annihilation, primordial black hole evaporation and other interesting processes. No D̄ nuclei were found, and a flux limit is estimated. We also present the results of preliminary strangelet search. Some interesting effects of the Mir space station on AMS-01 when Discovery was docked with Mir are also discussed.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Henning, Reyco, 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ulrich J. Becker.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/30117

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/30117