Measurement of the Proton and Helium-4 Cross Sections in Space with DAMPE

Hadronic cross sections are one of the dominant sources of uncertainty for the measurement of Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) fluxes with calorimetric experiments. Refining these cross sections can serve as an important step towards obtaining a better understanding of GCR production and propagation. This work presents measurements of hadronic cross sections for protons and helium-4 nuclei using data from the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE). DAMPE is a satellite-borne experiment designed for the direct detection of cosmic rays. It has been operating in a stable configuration ever since its launch in December 2015. The large dataset of hadronic cosmic-ray events recorded by DAMPE enables cross-section measurements over a broad kinetic energy range, from 20 GeV to 10 TeV. For helium-4 nuclei these are the first cross-section measurements at these energies for any heavy-target material. The results are used to improve the accuracy of current GCR flux measurements. Additionally, we demonstrate how the results can be scaled to extract the cross section for other heavy-target materials.