General Antiparticle Spectrometer

General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is an experiment looking for antideuteron particle from outer space cosmic rays. Anti-deuterons could be signature of dark matter annihilations. GAPS uses long-duration balloon experiments looking for anti-deuteron particles.

Anti-deuterons are produced by the annihilation of weakly interacting massive particles (abbreviated as WIMPs). The goal of the GAPS experiment is to captured anti-deuterons in a target material, form an exotic atom in an excited state. The exotic atom would quickly decay, producing X-rays energies with pion signature from nuclear annihilation.

The GAPS ground test was successfully using an particle accelerator at KEK in 2004 and 2005. The first high-altitude balloon test was done in June 2012 with six Si(Li) detectors.

GAPS Team

References

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