Construction and performance of the AMS-02 transition radiation detector for the International Space Station

AMS-02 (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) will fly during three years on the International Space Station performing spectroscopy of cosmic particles, allowing the direct search of antimatter and the indirect search of dark matter. Annihilation of supersymmetric dark matter candidates could produce an excess in the 10-300 GeV region of the positron spectrum. An overall 10(6) separation factor for positrons from the more abundant protons is required to detect the signal. A Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) has been designed to achieve these physics goal. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.