Phenomenology and detection of nuclear cosmic rays
Antje Putze
Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University
One century after the discovery of cosmic rays – a flux of energetic
charged particles which bombards the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere
– many questions remain still open on its origin, nature and transport.
The precise measurement of the cosmic-ray ion flux aims to study the
acceleration and propagation processes. In particular, the measurement
of secondary-to-primary ratios allows to constrain propagation models
very effectively due to its direct dependency to the grammage seen by the
particles during their transport. The knowledge and the characterisation
of the processes related to the propagation make it possible to
reconstruct the cosmic-ray source spectrum and thus to constrain the
acceleration processes, but also to test the existence of exotic
contributions such as the annihilation of dark-matter particles.
My work treats two aspects of cosmic-ray physics: the phenomenology
and the detection. Concerning the phenomenological aspect, the work
presented here consists in evaluating and studying the constraints on
galactic cosmic-ray propagation models provided by current measurements
using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo. The experimental aspect of this work
concerns the participation in the construction, the validation and the
data analysis of the CherCam subdetector – a Cherkov imager measuring the
charge of cosmic-ray ions for the CREAM experiment – whose preliminary
results are presented.
Date: | Mardi, le 17 mai 2011 |
Heure: | 16:00 |
Lieu: | Université McGill |
| Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103) |
Contact: | Pat Scott |
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