PoS - Proceedings of Science
Volume 395 - 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2021) - GAD - Gamma Ray Direct
Study of {^{26}Al}$ in the COSI 2016 Superpressure Balloon Flight
J. Beechert*  on behalf of the COSI collaboration
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: July 04, 2021
Published on: March 18, 2022
Abstract
The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a balloon-borne compact Compton telescope designed to survey the $\gamma$-ray sky from 0.2 to 5 MeV. COSI's wide field-of-view (FOV) and excellent energy resolution from high-purity germanium detectors make it uniquely capable of probing this under-explored energy regime. In particular, it can facilitate understanding of stellar nucleosynthesis through studies of diffuse emission from the radioisotope $\mathrm{^{26}Al}$ at 1.809 MeV. In 2016, COSI was launched from Wanaka, New Zealand on a NASA superpressure balloon and flew for 46 days. The flight was a technologic and scientific success, boasting live detection and polarization studies of GRB160530A, spectral analysis of the Crab Nebula and the 511-keV positron annihilation emission at the Galactic Center, and detection of Cygnus X-1. This article details the first maximum-likelihood search for the 1.809 MeV signature of Galactic $\mathrm{^{26}Al}$ in the 2016 data. The analysis reveals a promising excess around the expected energies of an $\mathrm{^{26}Al}$ signature with 3.7$\sigma$ significance and a measured flux of (17.0 $\pm$ 4.9) $\times$ 10$^{-4}$ ph cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$. Further exploration is currently underway to solidify the measurement.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.395.0611
How to cite

Metadata are provided both in "article" format (very similar to INSPIRE) as this helps creating very compact bibliographies which can be beneficial to authors and readers, and in "proceeding" format which is more detailed and complete.

Open Access
Creative Commons LicenseCopyright owned by the author(s) under the term of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.