PAMELA Experiment

Who We Are

The international experiment "RIM-PAMELA", which is a part of the Russian-Italian program "Russian-Italian Mission" with the participation of Swedish and German scientists were carried out during ~10 years beginning from June, 2006 up to January, 2016 in the near-Earth orbit aboard the russian satellite "Resurs-DK1".

Today there is no doubt that the results of the experiment "RIM-PAMELA" have important practical and scientific significance. They open new possibilities to search and to study of the hypothetical "dark" matter particles, to study the mechanisms of generation and propagation of galactic cosmic rays in interstellar space and the solar cosmic rays in interplanetary space.
In the same time the data obtained will be useful for determining the radiation environment in near space and, consequently, for design of equipment intended for use in the Earth orbit.

PAMELA main web page http://pamela.roma2.infn.it/

What We Do

The main goals of the research and scientific objectives are:

• The problem of the nature of dark matter
• The problem of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe
• Acceleration and propagation of CR in the Galaxy
• Solar modulation
• Generation of high-energy particles in solar flares
• Fluxes of high energy charged particles in near-Earth space, including the Earth's radiation belts

What we found

The main scientific results and discoveries are:

• The increasing of the ratio of positron flux to the electron plus positron flux in primary cosmic radiation with E>10 GeV. It may be a signature of dark matter.
• The same signature in antiproton measurements with E>50 GeV. It may lead to a strong limits on dark matter candidate's properties.
• The discovery of geomagnetically trapped cosmic ray antiprotons.
• Different shapes of the spectra for galactic protons and helium nuclei and their broken at rigiditiy ~200 GV. It may be used to improve the theoretical models of the generation and propagation of cosmic rays in the Galaxy
• It was registered dozens solar events including a quit powerful in December 2006 and March 2012 (SEP's).
• A long precise measurement of positron, electron and light nuclei in galactic cosmic rays at low energy. Important to understand a transport on cosmic particles in heliosphere and solar modulation effect.