Perspective of monochromatic gamma-ray line detection with the High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection (HERD) facility onboard China's Space Station

• Published in: arXiv.org 2016-04
• Main Authors: Huang, Xiaoyuan, Lamperstorfer, Anna S, Yue-Lin, Sming Tsai, Xu, Ming, Yuan, Qiang, Chang, Jin, Yong-Wei, Dong, Bing-Liang, Hu, Jun-Guang Lü, Wang, Le, Bo-Bing, Wu, Zhang, Shuang-Nan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computer simulation; Cosmic rays; Dark matter; Electrons; Energy resolution; Gamma rays; Leptons; Nuclei (nuclear physics); Photons; Space stations; Supersymmetry; Telescopes
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1509.02672

HERD is the High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection instrument proposed to operate onboard China's space station in the 2020s. It is designed to detect energetic cosmic ray nuclei, leptons and photons with a high energy resolution (\(\sim1\%\) for electrons and photons and \(20\%\) for nuclei) and a large geometry factor (\(>3\,{ m^2\,sr}\) for electrons and diffuse photons and \(>2\,{ m^2\,sr}\) for nuclei). In this work we discuss the capability of HERD to detect monochromatic \(\gamma\)-ray lines, based on simulations of the detector performance. It is shown that HERD will be one of the most sensitive instruments for monochromatic \(\gamma\)-ray searches at energies between \(\sim10\) to a few hundred GeV. Above hundreds of GeV, Cherenkov telescopes will be more sensitive due to their large effective area. As a specific example, we show that a good portion of the parameter space of a supersymmetric dark matter model can be probed with HERD.