The General Anti Particle Spectrometer (GAPS) is a balloon-borne cosmic-ray
experiment which is currently in its last phase of construction, undergoing
system testing, and scheduled for a long-duration balloon flight from McMurdo
Station in the Antarctic in December 2024. Its primary scientific goal is the
search for light antinuclei in cosmic rays at kinetic energies below 0.25
GeV/$n$. This energy region is especially of interest for beyond-the-standard model dark matter
searches and is still mostly uncharted. Searches for light antimatter nuclei
with energies below ~0.25 GeV/$n$ are a novel approach to the search for
dark matter because wide range of dark matter models proposes annihilation or
decay into matter-antimatter pairs.
GAPS will
yield unprecedented sensitivity to low-energy antideuterons and will measure
the low-energy antiproton spectrum with high statistics and precision. To
reach the required sensitivity, the GAPS detector incorporates a new approach
for antimatter detection, utilizing a tracker with custom, lithium-drifted
silicon detectors, designed to measure the X-ray cascade expected from antimatter
capture and charged particles from the subsequent annihilation. It also utilizes a fast time-of-flight system, allowing for a high-precision
beta measurement. This proceeding highlights GAPS scientific goals.