Beam test performance of a pixelated silicon array for the charge identification of cosmic rays

A large area silicon array for the next generation of space-based experiments has been designed to determine, via multiple dE/dx measurements, the electric charge of cosmic radiation. The instrument can achieve an excellent charge discrimination, thus allowing to assess the elemental composition of charged cosmic rays at relativistic energies. Pairs of silicon sensors segmented into pixels were tested with a beam of fully ionized nuclei from boron to nickel (Z=28) with a kinetic energy of ∼1GeV/amu, at the Fragment Separator (FRS) of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt. The response of the sensors to different nuclear species was accurately characterized. The results of the beam test clearly show that a double-layered silicon array can achieve single-element separation with a resolution close to 0.2 electron charge units, in the whole interval of atomic number Z under test.