AMS-100 is the next-generation high-energy cosmic-ray experiment in Space. It is designed as a magnetic spectrometer with a geometrical acceptance of 100 m² · sr to be operated for ten years at the Sun–Earth Lagrange Point 2. Its Time-of-Flight (TOF) detector is a crucial sub-detector for the main trigger and the particle identification constructed from individual scintillation counters. A fast time measurement with a resolution of 20 ps for a single counter is required to cover wide energy ranges for particle identification. A prototype counter has been designed based on a fast plastic scintillator tile readout by two silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). An amplifier board was built to merge 16 SiPM channels into four readout channels in a hybrid connection. The signals are read out by a fast waveform digitizer. The timing performance was studied with electrons from a ⁹⁰Sr source. A time resolution of 40 ps for a single counter has been achieved. Various operational and environmental conditions have been studied.

The magnetic spectrometer AMS-100, which includes a superconducting coil, is designed to measure cosmic rays and detect cosmic antimatter in space. This extreme environment requires a suitable sensing solution to monitor critical changes in the structure such as the beginning of a quench in the superconducting coil. Rayleigh-scattering-based distributed optical fibre sensors (DOFS) fulfil the high requirements for these extreme conditions but require precise calibration of the temperature and strain coefficients of the optical fibre. Therefore, the fibre-dependent strain and temperature coefficients $K_{\mathrm{T}}$ and $K_{ϵ}$ for the temperature range from 77 K to 353 K were investigated in this study. The fibre was integrated into an aluminium tensile test sample with well-calibrated strain gauges to determine the fibre’s $K_{ϵ}$ independently of its Young’s modulus. Simulations were used to validate that the strain caused by changes in temperature or mechanical conditions was the same in the optical fibre as in the aluminium test sample. The results indicated a linear temperature dependence of $K_{ϵ}$ and a non-linear temperature dependence of $K_{\mathrm{T}}$. With the parameters presented in this work, it was possible to accurately determine the strain or temperature of an aluminium structure over the entire temperature range from 77 K to 353 K using the DOFS.

Im Mai 2011 wurde das Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer mit dem letzten Flug des Space-Shuttles Endeavour auf die Internationale Raumstation gebracht. Seitdem erfasst es die geladene kosmische Strahlung mit bisher nie erreichter Präzision. Dabei liefert es neue Einblicke in hochenergetische Prozesse in unserer Milchstraße, die uns Rückschlüsse auf die Natur der Dunklen Materie und zur Frage der Materie-Antimaterie-Asymmetrie im Universum erlauben. Das Nachfolgeexperiment, AMS-100, könnte diese Messungen in der nächsten Dekade mit einer nochmals tausendfach höheren Sensitivität fortsetzen.

The next generation magnetic spectrometer in space, AMS-100, is designed to have a geometrical acceptance of $100\,\mathrm{m}^2\,\mathrm{sr}$ and to be operated for at least ten years at the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2. Compared to existing experiments, it will improve the sensitivity for the observation of new phenomena in cosmic rays, and in particular in cosmic antimatter, by at least a factor of 1000. The magnet design is based on high temperature superconductor tapes, which allow the construction of a thin solenoid with a homogeneous magnetic field of 1 Tesla inside. The inner volume is instrumented with a silicon tracker reaching a maximum detectable rigidity of 100 TV and a calorimeter system that is 70 radiation lengths deep, equivalent to four nuclear interaction lengths, which extends the energy reach for cosmic-ray nuclei up to the PeV scale, i.e. beyond the cosmic-ray knee. Covering most of the sky continuously, AMS-100 will detect high-energy gamma rays in the calorimeter system and by pair conversion in the thin solenoid, reconstructed with excellent angular resolution in the silicon tracker.

A precision measurement of the cosmic-ray positron spectrum may help to solve the puzzle of the nature of dark matter. Pairwise annihilation of neutralinos, predicted by some supersymmetric extensions to the standard model of particle physics, may leave a distinct feature in the cosmic-ray positron spectrum. As the available data are limited both in terms of statistics and energy range, we are developing a balloon-borne detector (PEBS) with a large acceptance of 4000 cm^2 sr. A superconducting magnet creating a field of 0.8 T and a tracking device consisting of scintillating fibers of 0.25 mm diameter with silicon photomultiplier readout will allow rigidity and charge determination to energies above 100 GeV. The dominant proton background is suppressed by the combination of an electromagnetic calorimeter and a transition radiation detector consisting of fleece layers interspersed with straw-tube proportional counters. The calorimeter uses a sandwich of tungsten and scintillating fibers that are again read out by silicon photomultipliers.