Abstract The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a space-borne apparatus for detecting the high-energy cosmic-ray-like electrons, γ-rays, protons and heavy ions. The Plastic Scintillator Detector (PSD) is the top-most sub-detector of the DAMPE. The PSD is designed to measure the charge of incident high-energy particles and it also serves as a veto detector for discriminating γ-rays from charged particles. In this paper, a PSD on-orbit calibration procedure is described, which includes the five steps of pedestal, dynode correlation, response to minimum-ionizing particles, light attenuation function and energy reconstruction. A method for reconstructing the charge of incident high energy cosmic-ray particles is introduced. The detection efficiency of each PSD strip is verified to be above 99.5%; the total efficiency of the PSD for charged particles is above 99.99%.
Keywords cosmic ray — instrumentation: DAMPE — charge measurement — plastic scintillator detector calibration
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