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

• Columbia University T. Aramaki, C.J. Hailey (P.I.), N. Madden, K. Mori, K. Perez, Florian Gahbauer
• University of California, Berkeley S.E. Boggs, P. Von Doetinchem
• University of California, Los Angeles R.A. Ong, J. Zweerink, S. A. I. Mognet
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory W.W. Craig
• Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency - Institute of Space & Astronautical Science, N. Bando, H. Fuke, T. Yoshida

References

• IOP science, Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Volume 2006 January 2006, C J Hailey
• Phys.org Antiparticles flooding the Earth deepen the dark matter mystery, April 5th, 2013
• Gizmag, Dark matter, WIMPS, and NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer data, By Brian Dodson, May 19, 2013
• UCLA, UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy, GAPS (General Antiparticle Spectrometer) project
• NASA, The General Antiparticle Spectrometer Experiment: Search for Dark Matter and Primordial Black Holes, by Charles J. Hailey (for the GAPS Collaboration), Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University.
• Columbia University, General Antiparticle Spectrometer Experiment, (GAPS): Recent Progress and Future Plans, C. J. Hailey, T. Aramaki, H. Fuke†, J.E. Koglin, K. Mori, N. Madden and T. Yoshida.
• Cornell University, The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) - Hunt for dark matter using low-energy antideuterons, by Ph. von Doetinchem, T. Aramaki, St.Boggs, W. Craig, H. Fuke, F. Gahbauer, Ch. Hailey, J. Koglin, N. Madden, I. Mognet, K. Mori, R. Ong, T. Yoshida, T. Zhang, J. Zweerink, submitted on 1 Dec 2010.