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Abstract: Space weather refers to environmental conditions in the interplanetary space and Earth’s magnetosphere, ionosphere and exosphere and can influence the performance and reliability of electronics based technological systems. The major role in space weather changes plays the solar wind, a stream of charged particles (mostly electrons and protons) with energies of approximately 1 keV, that can cause geomagnetic storms and auroras. During their entry into the atmosphere, high energy cosmic rays collide with atomic nuclei of atmospheric gasses. When scattering occurs extensive air showers are created. Those cascades of secondary particles create flashes of light due to the Cherenkov effect as well as excite molecules of nitrogen gas in atmosphere, which then glow in fluorescent light. In order to observe the light created by air showers, it has to be collected with telescopes. The particles from the cascades that reach ground can be detected with surface detectors. The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest observatory for cosmic ray measurements. It is located in Argentinian pampas covering an area of 3000 km2. It consists of 1660 surface detectors and 27 fluorescence telescopes. For cosmic rays with energies above few 1017 eV, a precise reconstruction of energy and direction of primary particle is achievable. Observatory also allows measurement of flux of incoming particles down to primary energies in ca. 10 GeV - 10 TeV interval, with a median energy ca. 80-90 GeV. This measurement capability is called "scaler" mode, since the corresponding data consist of scaler counted cascade particles with deposited energy between 15 and 100 MeV, at the average rate of 2 kHz per individual surface detector. For the purpose of this master thesis I compared the data from scaler mode measurements with measurements of neutron monitors, which are commonly used for space weather observations. With the correlation received from the comparison, I showed that scaler mode operation of Pierre Auger observatory can be used to monitor space weather events such as solar cycle and the decreases in the observed galactic cosmic ray intensity due to solar wind (Forbush decrease).
Keywords: Pierre Auger Observatory, cosmic rays, space weather, Forbush decrease
Published in RUNG: 17.09.2019; Views: 5098; Downloads: 181
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Keywords: very-high energy gamma-ray astronomy, Cherenkov Telescope Array, array layout optimisation, Monte Carlo studies
Published in RUNG: 18.04.2019; Views: 3107; Downloads: 0
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Abstract: I cooperated with the Department of Applied Physics III, Faculty of Physics of the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Spain, as a member of the evaluation committee in charge of awarding with the European mention the doctoral thesis of Dr. Ignacio Vegas Azcárate, entitled “Nanosecond range pulse generators for quality control and diagnosis of Cherenkov telescope cameras”.
Keywords: very-high energy gamma-ray astronomy, imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs), IACT camera quality control and diagnostics, nanosecond range pulse generators
Published in RUNG: 06.03.2018; Views: 4534; Downloads: 0
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Keywords: Xmax distributions, Pierre Auger Observatory, Telescope Array
Published in RUNG: 19.02.2018; Views: 3825; Downloads: 179
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Keywords: Telescope Array, Pierre Auger Observatory, direct cross-calibration
Published in RUNG: 19.02.2018; Views: 3467; Downloads: 172
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