Search for antideuterons and strangelets in cosmic rays with AMS-01

Abstract

AMS (the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) is a high-energy particle detector in space. An engineer- ing version of AMS, AMS-01, flew on the space shuttle Discovery for ten days in June 1998 and collected 108 cosmic ray events. This thesis extends the previous results of the AMS-01 flight by performing a search for antideuterons (⁻D) in cosmic rays. Antideuterons in cosmic rays could be a signal for neutralino dark matter annihilation, primordial black hole evaporation and other interesting processes. No D̄ nuclei were found, and a flux limit is estimated. We also present the results of preliminary strangelet search. Some interesting effects of the Mir space station on AMS-01 when Discovery was docked with Mir are also discussed.