ИСТИНА

Accurate measurements of the cosmic ray electron energy spectrum in the energy region 50 GeV to greater than 1 TeV may reveal structure caused by the annihilation of exotic dark matter particles and/or individual cosmic ray sources. Here we describe a new long duration balloon (LDB) experiment, ECAL, optimized to directly measure cosmic ray electrons up to several TeV. ECAL includes a double layer silicon matrix, a scintillating optical fiber track imager, a neutron detector and a fully active calorimeter to identify more than 90% of the incident electrons with an energy resolution of about 1.7% while misidentifying only 1 in 200,000 protons and 0.8% of secondary gamma rays as electrons. Two ECAL flights in Antarctica are planned for a total exposure of 50 days with the first flight anticipated for December 2009.