Wednesday 29 April 2009

Speaker: Piergiorgio Picozza   (INFN and University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)

Title: Searching for Dark Matter with Cosmic Antiparticles: the PAMELA  Experiment

Abstract:

New results on the antiproton-to-proton and positron-to-all electron ratios over a wide energy range (1 – 100 GeV)
have been  obtained by the PAMELA mission. These data are mainly interpreted in terms of dark matter annihilation
or pulsar contribution.

The instrument PAMELA,  in orbit since June 15th, 2006 on board the Russian satellite Resurs DK1, is daily
delivering to ground 16 Gigabytes of data. The apparatus is designed to study charged particles in the cosmic
radiation, with a particular focus on antiparticles for searching antimatter and signals of dark matter
annihilation. A combination of a magnetic spectrometer and different detectors allows antiparticles to be reliably
identified from a large background of other charged particles.

This talk reviews the design of the apparatus and illustrates the most important scientific results obtained by
PAMELA, together to some of the recent theoretical interpretations.


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   ***   This seminar to be held 11am in Pickavance theatre   ***
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