STUDY OF THE HERD CALORIMETER PERFORMANCE FOR THE COSMIC-RAY ELECTRON FLUX MEASUREMENT WITH SIMULATIONS AND HIGH-ENERGY ELECTRON BEAM TEST DATA

This thesis describes the development and the study of the performance of the first complete analysis for the cosmic-ray electron flux measurement with the calorimeter of the HERD experiment. The analysis is carried out through simulations, since the detector will start the data acquisition in 2027. In this work we show that HERD will be capable to measure the cosmic-ray electron flux up to 15 TeV with a proton contamination smaller than 10%: a very large extension of the measurement at high energy, since the current measurements are limited at about 5 TeV. Moreover, we analyze the high-energy electron beam test data acquired with a prototype of the calorimeter at a beam test carried out at the CERN SPS facility. We show the extremely good energy resolution of the prototype, and we perform a comparison between beam test data and beam test simulated data. The real data are well reproduced by the simulation, giving us a positive feedback on the significance of the study of the electron flux analysis.