Beam test performance of a scintillator-based detector for the charge identification of relativistic ions

Abstract We report on the measurements performed with relativistic ions from Be to Fe, at the Fragment Separator (FRS) of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, to test the performance of charge-sensitive detectors that were designed to separate – via multiple d E /d x measurements – fully stripped nuclei of cosmic origin in the experiment CALET. The latter is a space mission by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) scheduled to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013. The CALET instrument is managed by an international collaboration and it is scheduled to take data for 5 years on the Exposure Facility (JEM-EF) of the Japanese module KIBO on the ISS. The aim of the test was to accurately measure the response of the scintillator to different nuclear species and parametrize the saturation of the scintillation light in order to assess the impact of this effect on the charge resolution of the instrument.