Status of ARGO-YBJ: an overview

Aielli, G.; Bacci, C.; Barone, F.; Bartoli, B.; Bernardini, Paolo; X. J., Bi; Bleve, C.; Branchini, P.; Budano, A.; Bussino, S.; Calabrese Melcarne, A. K.; Camarri, P.; Cao, Z.; Cappa, A.; Cardarelli, R.; Catalanotti, S.; Cattaneo, C.; Cavaliere, S.; Celio, P.; Chen, S. Z.; Cheng, N.; Creti, P.; Cui, S. W.; Cusumano, G.; Dai, B. Z.; D’Alí Staiti, G.; Danzengluobu,; Dattoli, M.; DE MITRI, Ivan; De Rosa, R.; D’Ettorre Piazzoli, B.; De Vincenzi, M.; Di Girolamo, T.; Ding, X. H.; Di Sciascio, G.; Feng, C. F.; Feng, Zhaoyang; Feng, Zhenyong; Ferrigno, C.; Galeazzi, F.; Galeotti, P.; Gao, X. Y.; Gargana, R.; Garufi, F.; Gou, Q. B.; H. H., He; Haibing, Hu; Hongbo, Hu; Huang, Q.; Iacovacci, M.; James, I.; Jia, H. Y.; Labaciren,; H. J., Li; J. Y., Li; Liberti, B.; Liguori, G.; Liu, C. Q.; Liu, J.; Lu, H.; Mancarella, Giovanni; Mari, S. M.; Marsella, Giovanni; Martello, Daniele; Mastroianni, S.; Meng, X. R.; Mu, J.; Nicastro, L.; Ning, C. C.; Palummo, L.; Panareo, Marco; Perrone, Lorenzo; Pistilli, P.; X. B., Qu; Rossi, E.; Ruggieri, F.; Saggese, L.; Salvini, P.; Santonico, R.; Segreto, A.; Shen, P. R.; Sheng, X. D.; Shi, F.; Stanescu, C.; Surdo, A.; Tan, Y. H.; Vallania, P.; Vernetto, S.; Vigorito, C.; Wang, H.; Wang, Y. G.; C. Y., Wu; H. R., Wu; Xu, B.; Xue, L.; Yang, H. T.; Yang, Q. Y.; Yang, X. C.; G. C., Yu; Yuan, A. F.; Zha, M.; Zhang, H. M.; Zhang, J. L.; Zhang, L.; Zhang, P.; Zhang, X. Y.; Zhang, Y.; Zhaxisangzhu,; Zhou, X. X.; Zhu, F. R.; Zhu, Q. Q.; Zizzi, G.

doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2007.11.037

Within a Collaboration Agreement between INFN and CAS (Chinese Academy of Science), the ARGO-YBJ experiment is completely installed at the YangBaJing Cosmic Ray Laboratory (4300 m a.s.l., Tibet, P.R. China). ARGO-YBJ is a plane detector, with a total detection area of ∼6500 m2, made of Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) which provide a detailed space-time picture of the charged component of the extensive air showers. At present the detector is completely mounted and the central carpet of 5800 m2 is operating under a multiplicity trigger Npad ≥ 20, the trigger rate is about 3.5 kHz and the data flow is 5 MB/s. A 0.5 cm lead converter will be mounted on the detector in summer 2007.