Cerenkov angle and charge reconstruction with the RICH detector of the AMS experiment

Abstract

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) experiment to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) will be equipped with a proximity focusing Ring Imaging Cerenkov (RICH) detector, for measurements of particle electric charge and velocity. In this note, two possible methods for reconstructing the Cerenkov angle and the electric charge with the RICH, are discussed. A Likelihood method for the Cerenkov angle reconstruction was applied leading to a velocity determination for protons with a resolution of around 0.1%. The existence of a large fraction of background photons which can vary from event to event, implied a charge reconstruction method based on an overall efficiency estimation on an event-by-event basis.