Reconstruction of showers in the calorimeter during the first flight of the CREAM balloon experiment

Abstract

The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) balloon-borne experiment was first flown from Antarctica in December 2004. The instrument includes a tungsten/Sci-Fi calorimeter preceded by a graphite target (~0.5 interaction length and ~1 radiation length) where a hadronic shower is initiated by the inelastic interaction of the incoming nucleus. The fine granularity (1 cm) of the 20 radiation length calorimeter allows the imaging of the narrow electromagnetic core of the shower and the determination of the direction of the incident particle. Preliminary results, from the flight data, on the shower reconstruction capability of the instrument and on the observed shower properties are presented.