Search

We develop an in-situ index of refraction profile using the transit time of radio signals broadcast from an englacial transmitter to 2-5 km distant radio-frequency receivers, deployed at depths up to 200 m. Maxwell's equations generally admit two ray propagation solutions from a given transmitter, corresponding to a direct path (D) and a refracted path (R); the measured D vs. R (dt(D,R)) timing differences provide constraints on the index of refraction profile near South Pole, where the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) neutrino observatory is located. We constrain the refractive index profile by simulating D and R ray paths via ray tracing and comparing those to measured dt(D,R) signals. Using previous ice density data as a proxy for n(z), we demonstrate that our data strongly favors a glaciologically-motivated three-phase densification model rather than a single exponential scale height model. Simulations show that the single exponential model overestimates ARA neutrino sensitivity compared to the three-phase model.

The Askaryan Radio Array Station 1 (A1), the first among five autonomous stations deployed for the ARA experiment at the South Pole, is a unique ultra-high energy neutrino (UHEN) detector based on the Askaryan effect that uses Antarctic ice as the detector medium. Its 16 radio antennas (distributed across 4 strings, each with 2 Vertically Polarized (VPol), 2 Horizontally Polarized (HPol) receivers), and 2 strings of transmitting antennas (calibration pulsers, CPs), each with 1 VPol and 1 HPol channel, are deployed at depths less than 100 m within the shallow firn zone of the 2.8 km thick South Pole (SP) ice. We apply different methods to calibrate its Ice Ray Sampler second generation (IRS2) chip for timing offset and ADC-to-Voltage conversion factors using a known continuous wave input signal to the digitizer, and achieve a precision of sub-nanoseconds. We achieve better calibration for odd, compared to even samples, and also find that the HPols under-perform relative to the VPol channels. Our timing calibrated data is subsequently used to calibrate the ADC-to-Voltage conversion as well as precise antenna locations, as a precursor to vertex reconstruction. The calibrated data will then be analyzed for UHEN signals in the final step of data compression. The ability of A1 to scan the firn region of SP ice sheet will contribute greatly towards a 5-station analysis and will inform the design of the planned IceCube Gen-2 radio array., Comment: 10 pages

In the pursuit of the measurement of the still-elusive ultrahigh-energy (UHE) neutrino flux at energies of order EeV, detectors using the in-ice Askaryan radio technique have increasingly targeted lower trigger thresholds. This has led to improved trigger-level sensitivity to UHE neutrinos. Working with data collected by the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA), we search for neutrino candidates at the lowest threshold achieved to date, leading to improved analysis-level sensitivities. A neutrino search on a data set with 208.7~days of livetime from the reduced-threshold fifth ARA station is performed, achieving a 68\% analysis efficiency over all energies on a simulated mixed-composition neutrino flux with an expected background of $0.10_{-0.04}^{+0.06}$ events passing the analysis. We observe one event passing our analysis and proceed to set a neutrino flux limit using a Feldman-Cousins construction. We show that the improved trigger-level sensitivity can be carried through an analysis, motivating the Phased Array triggering technique for use in future radio-detection experiments. We also include a projection using all available data from this detector. Finally, we find that future analyses will benefit from studies of events near the surface to fully understand the background expected for a large-scale detector., Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures

The proposed IceCube-Gen2 (ICG2) seeks to instrument ~500 sq. km of Antarctic ice near the geographic South Pole with radio antennas, in order to observe the highest energy (E>1 EeV) neutrinos in the Universe. To this end, ICG2 will use the impulsive radio-frequency (RF) signal produced by neutrino interactions in polar ice caps. In such experiments, rare single event candidates must be unambiguously separated from background; to date, signal identification strategies primarily reject thermal noise and anthropogenic backgrounds. Here, we consider the possibility that fake neutrino signals may also be naturally generated via the 'triboelectric effect'. This broadly includes any process in which force applied at a boundary layer results in displacement of surface charge, generating a potential difference {\Delta}V. Wind blowing over granular surfaces such as snow can induce such a {\Delta}V, with subsequent discharge. Discharges over nanosecond-timescales can then lead to RF emissions at characteristic MHz-GHz frequencies. We find that such backgrounds are evident in the several neutrino experiments considered, and are generally characterized by: a) a threshold wind velocity which likely depends on the experimental signal trigger threshold and layout; for the experiments considered herein, this value is typically O(10 m/s), b) frequency spectra generally shifted to the low-end of the frequency regime to which current radio experiments are typically sensitive (100-200 MHz), c) for the strongest background signals, an apparent preference for discharges from above-surface structures, although the presence of more isotropic, lower amplitude triboelectric discharges cannot be excluded.

When testing and calibrating particle detectors in a test beam, accurate tracking information independent of the detector being tested is extremely useful during the offline analysis of the data. A general-purpose Silicon Beam Tracker (SBT) was constructed with an active area of 32.0 x 32.0 mm2 to provide this capability for the beam calibration of the Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) calorimeter. The tracker consists of two modules, each comprised of two orthogonal layers of 380 {\mu}m thick silicon strip sensors. In one module each layer is a 64-channel AC-coupled single-sided silicon strip detector (SSD) with a 0.5 mm pitch. In the other, each layer is a 32-channel DC-coupled single-sided SSD with a 1.0 mm pitch. The signals from the 4 layers are read out using modified CREAM hodoscope front-end electronics with a USB 2.0 interface board to a Linux DAQ PC. In this paper, we present the construction of the SBT, along with its performance in radioactive source tests and in a CERN beam test in October 2006., Comment: 4 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, SORMA WEST 2008 poster #204

The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass experiment for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM) was installed on the ISS to measure high-energy cosmic-ray elemental spectra for the charge range $\rm Z=1$ to 26. The ISS-CREAM instrument includes a tungsten scintillating-fiber calorimeter preceded by a carbon target for energy measurements. The carbon target induces hadronic interactions, and showers of secondary particles develop in the calorimeter. The energy deposition in the calorimeter is proportional to the particle energy. As a predecessor to ISS-CREAM, the balloon-borne CREAM instrument was successfully flown seven times over Antarctica for a cumulative exposure of 191 days. The CREAM calorimeter demonstrated its capability to measure energies of cosmic-ray particles, and the ISS-CREAM calorimeter is expected to have a similar performance. Before the launch, an engineering-unit calorimeter was shipped to CERN for calibration and performance tests. This beam test included position, energy, and angle scans of electron and pion beams together with a high-voltage scan for calibration and characterization. Additionally, an attenuation effect in the scintillating fibers was studied. In this paper, beam test results, including corrections for the attenuation effect, are presented., Comment: 23 pages, 18 figures

The Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) is an ultra-high energy (UHE, $>10^{17}$ eV) neutrino detector designed to observe neutrinos by searching for the radio waves emitted by the relativistic products of neutrino-nucleon interactions in Antarctic ice. In this paper, we present constraints on the diffuse flux of ultra-high energy neutrinos between $10^{16}-10^{21}$ eV resulting from a search for neutrinos in two complementary analyses, both analyzing four years of data (2013-2016) from the two deep stations (A2, A3) operating at that time. We place a 90 % CL upper limit on the diffuse all flavor neutrino flux at $10^{18}$ eV of $EF(E)=5.6\times10^{-16}$ $\textrm{cm}^{-2}$$\textrm{s}^{-1}$$\textrm{sr}^{-1}$. This analysis includes four times the exposure of the previous ARA result, and represents approximately 1/5 the exposure expected from operating ARA until the end of 2022., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures; Accepted to PRD

Primary cosmic-ray elemental spectra have been measured with the balloon-borne Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) experiment since 2004. The third CREAM payload (CREAM-III) flew for 29 days during the 2007-2008 Antarctic season. Energies of incident particles above 1 TeV are measured with a calorimeter. Individual elements are clearly separated with a charge resolution of ~0.12 e (in charge units) and ~0.14 e for protons and helium nuclei, respectively, using two layers of silicon charge detectors. The measured proton and helium energy spectra at the top of the atmosphere are harder than other existing measurements at a few tens of GeV. The relative abundance of protons to helium nuclei is 9.53+-0.03 for the range of 1 TeV/n to 63 TeV/n. The ratio is considerably smaller than other measurements at a few tens of GeV/n. The spectra become softer above ~20 TeV. However, our statistical uncertainties are large at these energies and more data are needed.

The BESS-Polar Collaboration measured the energy spectra of cosmic-ray protons and helium during two long-duration balloon flights over Antarctica in December 2004 and December 2007, at substantially different levels of solar modulation. Proton and helium spectra probe the origin and propagation history of cosmic rays in the galaxy, and are essential to calculations of the expected spectra of cosmic-ray antiprotons, positrons, and electrons from interactions of primary cosmic-ray nuclei with the interstellar gas, and to calculations of atmospheric muons and neutrinos. We report absolute spectra at the top of the atmosphere for cosmic-ray protons in the kinetic energy range 0.2-160 GeV and helium nuclei 0.15-80 GeV/nucleon. The corresponding magnetic rigidity ranges are 0.6-160 GV for protons and 1.1-160 GV for helium. These spectra are compared to measurements from previous BESS flights and from ATIC-2, PAMELA, and AMS-02. We also report the ratio of the proton and helium fluxes from 1.1 GV to 160 GV and compare to ratios from PAMELA and AMS-02., Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures, Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

The ratios of fluxes of heavy nuclei from sulfur (Z=16) to chromium (Z=24) to the flux of iron were measured by the ATIC-2 experiment. The ratios are decreasing functions of energy from 5 GeV/n to approximately 80 GeV/n, as expected. However, an unexpected sharp upturn in the ratios are observed for energies above 100 GeV/n for all elements from Z=16 to Z=24. Similar upturn but with lower amplitude was also discovered in the ATIC-2 data for the ratio of fluxes of abundant even nuclei (C, O, Ne, Mg, Si) to the flux of iron. Therefore the spectrum of iron is significantly different from the spectra of other abundant even nuclei., Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX2e, a paper for 23rd European Cosmic Ray Symposium (2012)

In two long-duration balloon flights over Antarctica, the BESS-Polar collaboration has searched for antihelium in the cosmic radiation with higher sensitivity than any reported investigation. BESS- Polar I flew in 2004, observing for 8.5 days. BESS-Polar II flew in 2007-2008, observing for 24.5 days. No antihelium candidate was found in BESS-Polar I data among 8.4\times 10^6 |Z| = 2 nuclei from 1.0 to 20 GV or in BESS-Polar II data among 4.0\times 10^7 |Z| = 2 nuclei from 1.0 to 14 GV. Assuming antihelium to have the same spectral shape as helium, a 95% confidence upper limit of 6.9 \times 10^-8 was determined by combining all the BESS data, including the two BESS-Polar flights. With no assumed antihelium spectrum and a weighted average of the lowest antihelium efficiencies from 1.6 to 14 GV, an upper limit of 1.0 \times 10^-7 was determined for the combined BESS-Polar data. These are the most stringent limits obtained to date., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

The energy spectrum of cosmic-ray antiprotons from 0.17 to 3.5 GeV has been measured using 7886 antiprotons detected by BESS-Polar II during a long-duration flight over Antarctica near solar minimum in December 2007 and January 2008. This shows good consistency with secondary antiproton calculations. Cosmologically primary antiprotons have been investigated by comparing measured and calculated antiproton spectra. BESS-Polar II data show no evidence of primary antiprotons from evaporation of primordial black holes., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letters

A strong excess in a form of a wide peak in the energy range of 300-800 GeV was discovered in the first measurements of the electron spectrum in the energy range from 20 GeV to 3 TeV by the balloon-borne experiment ATIC (J. Chang et al. Nature, 2008). The experimental data processing and analysis of the electron spectrum with different criteria for selection of electrons, completely independent of the results reported in (J. Chang et al. Nature, 2008) is employed in the present paper. The new independent analysis generally confirms the results of (J. Chang et al. Nature, 2008), but shows that the spectrum in the region of the excess is represented by a number of narrow peaks. The measured spectrum is compared to the spectrum of (J. Chang et al. Nature, 2008) and to the spectrum of the Fermi/LAT experiment., Comment: LaTeX2e, 10 pages, 4 figures, a paper for ECRS 2010 (Turku, Finland); http://www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/119/2011/

Cosmic-ray proton and helium spectra have been measured with the balloon-borne Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass experiment flown for 42 days in Antarctica in the 2004-2005 austral summer season. High-energy cosmic-ray data were collected at an average altitude of ~38.5 km with an average atmospheric overburden of ~3.9 g cm$^{-2}$. Individual elements are clearly separated with a charge resolution of ~0.15 e (in charge units) and ~0.2 e for protons and helium nuclei, respectively. The measured spectra at the top of the atmosphere are represented by power laws with a spectral index of -2.66 $\pm$ 0.02 for protons from 2.5 TeV to 250 TeV and -2.58 $\pm$ 0.02 for helium nuclei from 630 GeV/nucleon to 63 TeV/nucleon. They are harder than previous measurements at a few tens of GeV/nucleon. The helium flux is higher than that expected from the extrapolation of the power law fitted to the lower-energy data. The relative abundance of protons to helium nuclei is 9.1 $\pm$ 0.5 for the range from 2.5 TeV/nucleon to 63 TeV/nucleon. This ratio is considerably smaller than the previous measurements at a few tens of GeV/nucleon., Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures

The final results of processing the data from the balloon-born experiment ATIC-2 (Antarctica, 2002-2003) for the energy spectra of protons and He, C, O, Ne, Mg, Si, and Fe nuclei, the spectrum of all particles, and the mean logarithm of atomic weight of primary cosmic rays as a function of energy are presented. The final results are based on improvement of the methods used earlier, in particular, considerably increased resolution of the charge spectrum. The preliminary conclusions on the significant difference in the spectra of protons and helium nuclei (the proton spectrum is steeper) and the non-power character of the spectra of protons and heavier nuclei (flattening of carbon spectrum at energies above 10 TeV) are confirmed. A complex structure of the energy dependence of the mean logarithm of atomic weight is found., Comment: 4 pages, a paper for 30th Russian Cosmic Ray Conference (2008, St. Petersburg)

The balloon-borne Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) experiment launched five times from Antarctica has achieved a cumulative flight duration of about 156 days above 99.5% of the atmosphere. The instrument is configured with complementary and redundant particle detectors designed to extend direct measurements of cosmic-ray composition to the highest energies practical with balloon flights. All elements from protons to iron nuclei are separated with excellent charge resolution. Here we report results from the first two flights of ~70 days, which indicate hardening of the elemental spectra above ~200 GeV/nucleon and a spectral difference between the two most abundant species, protons and helium nuclei. These results challenge the view that cosmic-ray spectra are simple power laws below the so-called knee at ~1015 eV. This discrepant hardening may result from a relatively nearby source, or it could represent spectral concavity caused by interactions of cosmic rays with the accelerating shock. Other possible explanations should also be investigated., Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, published in ApJL (corresponding author: seo@umd.edu)

During its second Antarctic flight, the CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass) balloon experiment collected data for 28 days, measuring the charge and the energy of cosmic rays (CR) with a redundant system of particle identification and an imaging thin ionization calorimeter. Preliminary direct measurements of the absolute intensities of individual CR nuclei are reported in the elemental range from carbon to iron at very high energy., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, presented at XV International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI 2008)

We present new measurements of the energy spectra of cosmic-ray (CR) nuclei from the second flight of the balloon-borne experiment CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass). The instrument (CREAM-II) was comprised of detectors based on different techniques (Cherenkov light, specific ionization in scintillators and silicon sensors) to provide a redundant charge identification and a thin ionization calorimeter capable of measuring the energy of cosmic rays up to several hundreds of TeV. The data analysis is described and the individual energy spectra of C, O, Ne, Mg, Si and Fe are reported up to ~ 10^14 eV. The spectral shape looks nearly the same for all the primary elements and can be expressed as a power law in energy E^{-2.66+/-0.04}. The nitrogen absolute intensity in the energy range 100-800 GeV/n is also measured., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, presented at ICRC 2009, Lodz, Poland

The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) balloon experiment had two successful flights in 2004/05 and 2005/06. It was designed to perform energy measurements from a few GeV up to 1000 TeV, taking advantage of different detection techniques. The first instrument, CREAM-1, combined a transition radiation detector with a calorimeter to provide independent energy measurements of cosmicraynuclei. Each detector was calibrated with particle beams in a limited range of energies. In order to assess the absolute energy scale of the instrument and to investigate the systematic effects of each technique, a cross-calibration was performed by comparing the two independent energy estimates on selected samples of oxygen and carbon nuclei., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, presented at ICRC 2008

The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) is a balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the composition and energy spectra of cosmic rays of charge Z = 1 to 26 up to an energy of ~ 10^15 eV. CREAM had two successful flights on long-duration balloons (LDB) launched from Mc- Murdo Station, Antarctica, in December 2004 and December 2005. CREAM-I achieves a substantial measurement redundancy by employing multiple detector systems, namely a Timing Charge Detector and a Silicon Charge Detector (SCD) for particle identification, and a Transition Radiation Detector and a sampling tungsten/scintillating-fiber ionization calorimeter (CAL) for energy measurement. In this paper, preliminary energy spectra of various elements measured with CAL/SCD during the first 42-day flight are presented., Comment: Proc. 30th Int. Cosmic Ray Conf., Merida, 2, 63-66, 2007

The CREAM calorimeter, designed to measure the spectra of cosmic-ray nuclei from under 1 TeV to 1000 TeV, is a 20 radiation length (X0) deep sampling calorimeter. The calorimeter is comprised of 20 layers of tungsten interleaved with 20 layers of scintillating fiber ribbons, and is preceded by a pair of graphite interaction targets providing about 0.42 proton interaction lengths (\lambda int). The calorimeter was placed in one of CERN's SPS accelerator beams for calibration and testing. Beams of 150 GeV electrons were used for calibration, and a variety of electron, proton, and nuclear fragment beams were used to test the simulation model of the detector. In this paper we discuss the performance of the calorimeter in the electron beam and compare electron beam data with simulation results., Comment: 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference Pune (2005) 8, 371-374

The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) calorimeter is designed to measure the spectra of cosmic-ray particles over the energy range from ~10^11 eV to ~10^15 eV. Its first flight as part of the CREAM-I balloon-borne payload in Antarctica during the 2004/05 season resulted in a recordbreaking 42 days of exposure. Calorimeter calibration using various beam test data will be discussed in an attempt to assess the uncertainties of the energy measurements., Comment: Proc. 30th Int. Cosmic Ray Conf., Merida, 2, 421-424, 2007

CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass) is a multi-flight balloon mission designed to collect direct data on the elemental composition and individual energy spectra of cosmic rays. Two instrument suites have been built to be flown alternately on a yearly base. The tungsten/Sci-Fi imaging calorimeter for the second flight, scheduled for December 2005, was calibrated with electron and proton beams at CERN. A calibration procedure based on the study of the longitudinal shower profile is described and preliminary results of the beam test are presented., Comment: This submission has been withdrawn by arXiv administrators because it is a duplicate of arXiv:physics/0507174

We present new measurements of the energy spectra of cosmic-ray (CR) nuclei from the second flight of the balloon-borne experiment Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM). The instrument included different particle detectors to provide redundant charge identification and measure the energy of CRs up to several hundred TeV. The measured individual energy spectra of C, O, Ne, Mg, Si, and Fe are presented up to $\sim 10^{14}$ eV. The spectral shape looks nearly the same for these primary elements and it can be fitted to an $E^{-2.66 \pm 0.04}$ power law in energy. Moreover, a new measurement of the absolute intensity of nitrogen in the 100-800 GeV/$n$ energy range with smaller errors than previous observations, clearly indicates a hardening of the spectrum at high energy. The relative abundance of N/O at the top of the atmosphere is measured to be $0.080 \pm 0.025 $(stat.)$ \pm 0.025 $(sys.) at $\sim $800 GeV/$n$, in good agreement with a recent result from the first CREAM flight., Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal

Titanium is a rare, secondary nucleus among Galactic cosmic rays. Using the Silicon matrix in the ATIC experiment, Titanium has been separated. The energy dependence of the Ti to Fe flux ratio in the energy region from 5 GeV per nucleon to about 500 GeV per nucleon is presented., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy Letters

We present new measurements of heavy cosmic-ray nuclei at high energies per- formed during the first flight of the balloon-borne cosmic-ray experiment CREAM (Cosmic-Ray Energetics And Mass). This instrument uses multiple charge detectors and a transition radiation detector to provide the first high accuracy measurements of the relative abundances of elements from boron to oxygen up to energies around 1 TeV/n. The data agree with previous measurements at lower energies and show a relatively steep decline (~E$^-0.6$ to E$^-0.5$) at high energies. They further show the source abundance of nitrogen relative to oxygen is ~10% in the TeV/n region., Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics

The BESS-Polar spectrometer had its first successful balloon flight over Antarctica in December 2004. During the 8.5-day long-duration flight, almost 0.9 billion events were recorded and 1,520 antiprotons were detected in the energy range 0.1-4.2 GeV. In this paper, we report the antiproton spectrum obtained, discuss the origin of cosmic-ray antiprotons, and use antiprotons to probe the effect of charge sign dependent drift in the solar modulation., Comment: 18 pages, 1 table, 5 figures, submitted to Physics Letters B

The ATIC balloon-borne experiment measures the energy spectra of elements from H to Fe in primary cosmic rays from about 100 GeV to 100 TeV. ATIC is comprised of a fully active bismuth germanate calorimeter, a carbon target with embedded scintillator hodoscopes, and a silicon matrix that is used as the main charge detector. The silicon matrix produces good charge resolution for protons and helium but only partial resolution for heavier nuclei. In the present paper, the charge resolution of ATIC was improved and backgrounds were reduced in the region from Be to Si by using the upper layer of the scintillator hodoscope as an additional charge detector. The flux ratios of nuclei B/C, C/O, N/O in the energy region from about 10 GeV/nucleon to 300 GeV/nucleon obtained from this high-resolution, high-quality charge spectra are presented, and compared with existing theoretical predictions., Comment: 4 pages,2 figures, a paper for 30-th International Cosmic Rays Conference

The results of ATIC-2 baloon experiment (2002-2003) for energy spectra of protons, He, C, O, Ne, Mg, Si, Fe, some groups of nuclei, and all-particle spectrum in primary cosmic rays are presented in energy region 50GeV--200TeV. The conclusion is that the spectra of protons and helium nuclei are essentially different (the spectrum of protons is steeper) and the spectra of protons and heavy nuclei have no-power form., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, report on 29-th Russian Cosmic Rays Conference, to be published in Bull.Russ.Acad.Sci., Phys

We measured low energy cosmic-ray proton and helium spectra in the kinetic energy range 0.215 - 21.5 GeV/n at different solar activities during a period from 1997 to 2002. The observations were carried out with the BESS spectrometer launched on a balloon at Lynn Lake, Canada. A calculation for the correction of secondary particle backgrounds from the overlying atmosphere was improved by using the measured spectra at small atmospheric depths ranging from 5 through 37 g/cm^2. The uncertainties including statistical and systematic errors of the obtained spectra at the top of atmosphere are 5-7 % for protons and 6-9 % for helium nuclei in the energy range 0.5 - 5 GeV/n., Comment: 27 pages, 7 Tables, 9 figures, Submitted to Astroparticle Physics

CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass) is a multi-flight balloon mission designed to collect direct data on the elemental composition and individual energy spectra of cosmic rays. Two instrument suites have been built to be flown alternately on a yearly base. The tungsten/Sci-Fi imaging calorimeter for the second flight, scheduled for December 2005, was calibrated with electron and proton beams at CERN. A calibration procedure based on the study of the longitudinal shower profile is described and preliminary results of the beam test are presented., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. To be published in the Proceedings of 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005), Pune, India, August 3-10, 2005

Analysis of Sun photometer measured and satellite retrieved aerosol optical depth (AOD) datahas shown that major aerosol pollution events with very highfine mode AOD (>1.0 in midvisible) in theChina/Korea/Japan region are often observed to be associated with significant cloud cover. This makesremote sensing of these events difficult even for high temporal resolution Sun photometer measurements.Possible physical mechanisms for these events that have high AOD include a combination of aerosolhumidification, cloud processing, and meteorological covariation with atmospheric stability andconvergence. The new development of Aerosol Robotic Network Version 3 Level 2 AOD with improved cloudscreening algorithms now allow for unprecedented ability to monitor these extremefine mode pollutionevents. Further, the spectral deconvolution algorithm (SDA) applied to Level 1 data (L1; no cloud screening)provides an even more comprehensive assessment offine mode AOD than L2 in current and previous dataversions. Studying the 2012 winter-summer period, comparisons of Aerosol Robotic Network L1 SDA dailyaveragefine mode AOD data showed that Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer satellite remotesensing of AOD often did not retrieve and/or identify some of the highestfine mode AOD events in thisregion. Also, compared to models that include data assimilation of satellite retrieved AOD, the L1 SDAfinemode AOD was significantly higher in magnitude, particularly for the highest AOD events that were oftenassociated with significant cloudiness.