Measurement of the cosmic ray proton spectrum from 40 GeV to 100 TeV with the DAMPE satellite
2019
The precise measurement of the spectrum of protons, the most abundant component of the cosmic radiation, is necessary to understand the source and acceleration of
cosmic raysin the
Milky Way. This work reports the measurement of the
cosmic rayproton fluxes with kinetic energies from 40 GeV to 100 TeV, with 2 1/2 years of data recorded by the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE). This is the first time that an experiment directly measures the
cosmic rayprotons up to ~100 TeV with high statistics. The measured spectrum confirms the spectral hardening at ~300 GeV found by previous experiments and reveals a softening at ~13.6 TeV, with the
spectral indexchanging from ~2.60 to ~2.85. Our result suggests the existence of a new spectral feature of
cosmic raysat energies lower than the so-called knee and sheds new light on the origin of Galactic
cosmic rays.
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