H. Hofer (emeritus), F. Pauss, G. Viertel

in preparation

AMS is designed to measure precisely charged particle and antiparticle spectra in space. One of the main physics goals is to investigate whether antimatter exists in the Universe today in a measurable quantity. In addition, like in the case of MAGIC, interesting searches for the existence of CDM are attempted.

The AMS-01 detector consisted of a permanent magnet, layers of silicon tracking detectors, time-of-flight and Cherenkov counters. Our group contributed to the silicon tracker and electronics and was responsible for the overall detector integration. The detector assembly took place at our Laboratory in Zurich. The AMS-01 experiment was installed on the Space Shuttle Discovery during a 10 days mission in 1998 and demonstrated the feasibility to operate a large magnetic spectrometer in space. From the 100 million events collected several new physics results were obtained (e.g. the Helium to Antihelium ratio, lepton and proton spectra in near earth orbit).

AMS-02 has been redesigned to include a superconducting spectrometer, which allows to measure charged particles and heavy ions up to the TeV range and thus extends the physics reach of the AMS experiment. Most of the detector components are built or in the final assembly phase.

The future of AMS depends on the actual NASA flight schedule, which is presently under discussion.

AMS-homepage