Energy spectrum of cosmic ray protons and helium nuclei measured by the ARGO-YBJ experiment

The ARGO-YBJ experiment is a full-coverage air shower detector operating at the Yangbajing International Cosmic Ray Observatory (Tibet, PR China, 4300 m a.s.l.). The detector was in stable data taking in its full configuration from November 2007 to February 2013. More than 5 × 10 11 events have been collected and reconstructed. Due to its characteristics (full-coverage, high segmentation, high altitude operation) the ARGO-YBJ experiment is able to investigate the cosmic ray energy spectrum in a wide energy range and offer the possibility of measuring the cosmic ray light component spectrum down to the TeV region, where direct balloon-borne measurements are available. In this work we present the measurement of the proton and helium spectra in the energy range 1–300 TeV by using a large data sample collected between January 2008 and December 2011.