Extending the Iron Energy Spectrum Measurements of the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer throughout 1997–2011

摘要

The Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS) aboard the Advanced Composition Explorer has been measuring galactic cosmic ray elemental and isotopic abundances of boron through nickel since late 1997. The CRIS instrument itself is a silicon detector telescope stack using eight energy deposit measurements to identify particles and their energies using a E vs. E' measurement technique, with particles stopping in one of the detector layers. In this paper, we make preliminary measurements for particles penetrating through the bottom of the detector stack, extending energy measurements above 700 MeV/nuc for iron, and we examine these extended energies throughout the available data from 1997 to 2011. During this period, CRIS observed iron minimum and maximum intensities in 2000 and 2009, respectively, with the maximum intensities setting the record as the highest intensities of the space era to date.