DARK MATTER: INFN AND IHEP SIGN AGREEMENT FOR THE NEW SPACE TELESCOPE HERD

9 May 2017

HERD 2017The cooperation between Italy and China for dark matter research is confirmed and strengthened. During the bilateral meeting of May 9thbetween INFN and IHEP (Institute for High Energy Physics) of Beijing, the two Institutes signed the letter of interest to participate in the HERD (High Energy Cosmic Radiation Detection) experiment.HERD is one of the main science projects of the Chinese Space Station, which involves the construction of a new powerful space telescope. The scientific objectives of HERD, whose launch is planned for 2020, are dark matter particle detection, cosmic ray composition analysis and high energy gamma ray observation. The main characteristics of the future detector are its total weight, which will be less than 2 tons, and its total energy consumption, which will be less than 2 kilowatts.
To achieve its scientific objectives, HERD must be able to measure with great accuracy the energy and direction of origin of electrons and gamma rays, i.e. high energy photons (from tens of GeV up to 10 TeV), and the energy of cosmic rays, also determining their charge (up to the PeV scale). HERD will be able to detect high energy gamma rays, electrons and cosmic rays with a higher resolution compared to current telescopes: this implies that the experiment has great potential in contributing in an innovative manner to the understanding of the origin and propagation of high energy cosmic rays, and to the identification of possible “signatures” left by dark matter particles, but also to new discoveries in the field of so-called “high energy gamma-ray astronomy”.

You might also be interested in

The cavern that will host the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, and a rendering of the future configuration of the experiment. ©University of Tokyo and Nikken Sekkei

Japan: excavation of the gigantic cavern for the Hyper-K experiment completed

Pier Andrea Mandò, Professor at the University of Florence and INFN associate, at LABEC, the INFN Laboratory of nuclear techniques for the Environment and Cultural Heritage

Pier Andrea Mandò awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize 2025 by the Italian Physical Society

Positioning of one of the new ARCA detection units ©KM3NeT

ARCA-51 offshore campaign: 10,000 new eyes for KM3NeT

Infographic of the GW231123 event

LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA and the most massive black hole merger ever detected via gravitational waves

Nobel laureate Takaaki Kajita at the event for Einstein Telescope at Expo2025 Osaka

Expo2025 Osaka: Sardinia for Einstein Telescope in the spotlight with Nobel laureate Kajita

The sustainability of ET, interview with Maria Marsella