In collaboration with China, an air shower observation array is built at Yangbajing
(4300m above sea level, 90.53 deg E,30.11 deg N) in Tibet, China to observe high-energy cosmic rays.
Fig. 1 Our air shower array constructed at Yangbajing (4300m above sea level) in Tibet.
Our research subjects are:
Search for high-energy gamma-ray (3 TeV) celestial point sources
Measurement of energy spectrum and chemical composition of very high-energy primary cosmic rays
Study of 3 dimensional global structure in the solar and interplanetary magnetic fields by means of high-energy galactic cosmic rays
Observation of solar neutrons induced by solar flares
, etc.
Our air shower array consists of 697 scintillation counters which are
placed at a lattice with 7.5 m spacing and 36 scintillation counters
which are placed at a lattice with 15 m spacing.
Each counter has a plate of
plastic scintillator, 0.5 m2 in
area and 3 cm in thickness, equipped with a 2-inch-in-diameter
photomultiplier tube (PMT).
The time and charge information of each
PMT hit by an air shower event is recorded to determine its direction
and energy. The detection threshold energy is approximately 3 TeV,
which is the lowest one achieved by an air shower array in the
world. The event trigger rate is currently 1.5 kHz and the data size becomes 26 GB / day.
The angular resolution of the air shower array is estimated by the Moon's shadow
to be less than 1 degree, which is also the world best performance (see Fig. 1,3).
Thanks to the good angular resolution and high statistics, we
succeeded in clearly observing the "Sun's shadow" and " Moon's shadow" in
the galactic cosmic rays as they have finite diameter (0.5 deg) and
shield cosmic rays coming from their directions (Fig. 2, 14). The
Moon's shadow position displacement in the north-south direction
demonstrates our pointing accuracy, while the west-east displacement
gives us the energy scale calibration in the TeV region by means of
cosmic-ray bending effect in the geomagnetic field.
Fig. 2 Deficit in galactic cosmic rays around the Moon direction
("Moon's shadow"). Contour map of the weights of deficit event
densities around the Moon centered in the figure. The contour lines
are drawn with a step of 2 sigma. Angular distance is measured from
the direction of the Moon along the right ascension (abscissa) and the
declination (ordinate).
At the center of our air shower array, burst detectors and emusion chambers
were set up to closely observe the core region of an air shower
event. The total area of them is 80 m2.
Each burst detector is composed of a plate of plastic
scintillator 160 cm (length) x 50 cm (width) x 2 cm (thikness) and 4
photodiodes attached to each corner of the plate. On each burst
detecter, placed were 6 layers of emulsion chambers (x-ray film
interleaved with Pb plate). This hybrid experiment incorporating the
air shower array, burst detectors emulsion chambers enables us to
select and measure the proton component in primary cosmic rays in the
"knee" region (10 15-1016 eV).
Besides, we set up a solar neutron telescope, 9 m2 in area and 40 cm in thickness,
composed of plastic scintillator plates with photomultiplier tubes,
surrounded by proportional tubes. The solar acivities have 11-year
period and were in a very active state around the year 2000. The solar
telescope aims at detecting high-energy solar neutrons accompanied
with solar flares at an active phase. Systematic study of such solar
neutrons will provide us with important hints to ion acceleration
mechanism in a solar flare as well as to cosmic-ray acceleration
mechanism.
Fig. 3 Scintillator counter employed in our air shower array.
Fig. 4 One unit of emulsion chambers and burst detector.
Fig. 5 Solar neutron telescope.
eV: electron volt. Energy obtained by an electron accelerated between
1 volt potential difference. 1 eV = 1.6x10-19J, 1 TeV = 1012 eV.