Hadronic cross section measurements with the DAMPE space mission using 20GeV-10TeV cosmic-ray protons and $^4$He
Creators: name: Alemanno, F.
name: An, Q.
name: Azzarello, P.
name: Barbato, F. C. T.
name: Bernardini, P.
name: Bi, X. J.
name: Cagnoli, I.
name: Cai, M. S.
name: Casilli, E.
name: Catanzani, E.
name: Chang, J.
name: Chen, D. Y.
name: Chen, J. L.
name: Chen, Z. F.
name: Coppin, P.
name: Cui, M. Y.
name: Cui, T. S.
name: Cui, Y. X.
name: Dai, H. T.
name: De Benedittis, A.
name: De Mitri, I.
name: de Palma, F.
name: Di Giovanni, A.
name: Ding, Q.
name: Dong, T. K.
name: Dong, Z. X.
name: Donvito, G.
name: Droz, D.
name: Duan, J. L.
name: Duan, K. K.
name: Fan, R. R.
name: Fan, Y. Z.
name: Fang, F.
name: Fang, K.
name: Feng, C. Q.
name: Feng, L.
name: Frieden, J. M.
name: Fusco, P.
name: Gao, M.
name: Gargano, F.
name: Gong, K.
name: Gong, Y. Z.
name: Guo, D. Y.
name: Guo, J. H.
name: Han, S. X.
name: Hu, Y. M.
name: Huang, G. S.
name: Huang, X. Y.
name: Huang, Y. Y.
name: Ionica, M.
name: Jiang, L. Y.
name: Jiang, Y. Z.
name: Jiang, W.
name: Kong, J.
name: Kotenko, A.
name: Kyratzis, D.
name: Lei, S. J.
name: Li, W. H.
name: Li, W. L.
name: Li, X.
name: Li, X. Q.
name: Liang, Y. M.
name: Liu, C. M.
name: Liu, H.
name: Liu, J.
name: Liu, S. B.
name: Liu, Y.
name: Loparco, F.
name: Luo, C. N.
name: Ma, M.
name: Ma, P. X.
name: Ma, T.
name: Ma, X. Y.
name: Marsella, G.
name: Mazziotta, M. N.
name: Mo, D.
name: Niu, X. Y.
name: Pan, X.
name: Parenti, A.
name: Peng, W. X.
name: Peng, X. Y.
name: Perrina, C.
name: Putti-Garcia, E.
name: Qiao, R.
name: Rao, J. N.
name: Ruina, A.
name: Sarkar, R.
name: Savina, P.
name: Serpolla, A.
name: Shangguan, Z.
name: Shen, W. H.
name: Shen, Z. Q.
name: Shen, Z. T.
name: Silveri, L.
name: Song, J. X.
name: Stolpovskiy, M.
name: Su, H.
name: Su, M.
name: Sun, H. R.
name: Sun, Z. Y.
name: Surdo, A.
name: Teng, X. J.
name: Tykhonov, A.
name: Wang, J. Z.
name: Wang, L. G.
name: Wang, S.
name: Wang, S. X.
name: Wang, X. L.
name: Wang, Y.
name: Wang, Y. F.
name: Wang, Y. Z.
name: Wang, Z. M.
name: Wei, D. M.
name: Wei, J. J.
name: Wei, Y. F.
name: Wu, D.
name: Wu, J.
name: Wu, S. S.
name: Wu, X.
name: Xia, Z. Q.
name: Xu, H. T.
name: Xu, J.
name: Xu, Z. H.
name: Xu, Z. L.
name: Xu, E. H.
name: Xu, Z. Z.
name: Xue, G. F.
name: Yang, H. B.
name: Yang, P.
name: Yang, Y. Q.
name: Yao, H. J.
name: Yu, Y. H.
name: Yuan, G. W.
name: Yuan, Q.
name: Yue, C.
name: Zang, J. J.
name: Zhang, S. X.
name: Zhang, W. Z.
name: Zhang, Yan
name: Zhang, Yi
name: Zhang, Y. J.
name: Zhang, Y. L.
name: Zhang, Y. P.
name: Zhang, Y. Q.
name: Zhang, Z.
name: Zhang, Z. Y.
name: Zhao, C.
name: Zhao, H. Y.
name: Zhao, X. F.
name: Zhou, C. Y.
name: Zhu, Y.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Precise direct cosmic-ray (CR) measurements provide an important probe to study the energetic particle sources in our Galaxy, and the interstellar environment through which these particles propagate. Uncertainties on hadronic models, ion-nucleon cross sections in particular, are currently the limiting factor towards obtaining more accurate CR ion flux measurements with calorimetric space-based experiments. We present an energy-dependent measurement of the inelastic cross section of protons and helium-4 nuclei (alpha particles) on a Bi$_4$Ge$_3$O$_{12}$ target, using 88 months of data collected by the DAMPE space mission. The kinetic energy range per nucleon of the measurement points ranges from 18 GeV to 9 TeV for protons, and from 5 GeV/n to 3 TeV/n for helium-4 nuclei. Our results lead to a significant improvement of the CR flux normalisation. In the case of helium-4, these results correspond to the first cross section measurements on a heavy target material at energies above 10 GeV/n.
description: Published in PRD