Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'TeV gamma ray astrophysics'

Cosmic rays, with an energy density of ∼ 1eVcm^–3, play an important role in the evolution of our Galaxy. Very high energy (TeV) gamma rays provide unique information about the acceleration sites of Galactic cosmic rays. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory is an all-sky surveying instrument sensitive to gamma rays from 100,GeV to 100,TeV with a 2steradian instantaneous field of view and a duty cycle of >95%. The array is located in Sierra Negra, Mexico at an elevation of 4,100m and was inaugurated in March 2015. Thanks to its modular design, science operation began in Summer 2013 with one third of the array. Using this data, a survey of the inner Galaxy region of Galactic longitude l ∈ [+15°, +50°] and latitude b ∈ [–4°, +4°] is performed. To address the ambiguities arising from unresolved sources in the data, a maximum likelihood technique is used to identify point source candidates. Ten sources and candidate sources are identified in this analysis. Eight of these are associated with known TeV sources but not all have differential fluxes compatible with previous measurements. Three sources are detected with significances >5σ after accounting for statistical trials, and are associated with known TeV sources. With data taken with the full array and improved reconstruction algorithms, the significance on the Crab nebula increases from 3.1σ√day to 5.5σ√day, which allows more sensitive sky surveys and more precise spectral and morphological analyses on individual sources.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are some of the most energetic explosions in the universe. They come from the core collapses of massive stars and the mergers of compact objects, and are observed as bright flashes of gamma rays (prompt emission) followed by long-lived, fading emission (afterglow) across the electromagnetic spectrum. The instruments on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope provide excellent observations of GRBs across a large energy range. The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM, 8 keV to 40 MeV) is currently the most prolific detector of GRBs, and the Large Area Telescope (LAT, ∼20 MeV to >300 GeV) has opened up the field of GRB observations to high-energy gamma rays.

In this thesis, I present studies on improving the LAT’s capability to detect GRBs onboard in realtime, and analyses of both a single, extraordinary burst (the record-breaking GRB 130427A) and the population of GBM GRBs with precursors in their lightcurves. In a small fraction of GRBs, a dim peak appears before the much brighter peaks that are normally observed during the prompt emission. I explore whether the properties of GRBs with precursors suggests that precursors have a distinct physical origin from the rest of the prompt emission, and discuss the implications for models of GRB precursor emission.

QC 20171031

Solar flares can release ~1e33 ergs of power, accelerate particles to relativistic speeds, heat plasma to ~15 million K and catastrophically reorganize 1e5 km long field structures in 100s–1000s of seconds. Magnetic reconnection of large-scale field structures in the corona are thought to power flares, but the precise mechanisms that convert the stored magnetic energy into particle kinetic energy are poorly understood.

Flare spectra in the 20 keV–10 MeV energy range are rich with information that provide a window into the underlying physics of flare particle acceleration. This hard X-ray (HXR)/gamma-ray emission can be used to understand electron and ion dynamics, particle abundances and the ambient plasma conditions in solar flares. Enhanced imaging, spectroscopy and polarimetry of flare emissions in this energy range are needed to address the current era of particle acceleration and transport questions, including: What causes the spatial separation between HXR emission generated by relativistic electrons and the gamma-ray line emission from energetic ions? How anisotropic are the relativistic electrons, and why can they dominate in the corona? How do the compositions of accelerated and ambient material vary with space and time, and why?

The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) instrument, launched in 2002, provided the first combined imaging and high-resolution spectroscopy in the HXR/gamma-ray range. RHESSI's volumes of detailed study on electron-associated emission < 1 MeV is in contrast to comparatively few ion-associated gamma-ray observations. Over the past two solar cycles RHESSI has imaged only five flares at the 2.2 MeV neutron-capture line and has been able to resolve ion lines in ~30 events. My research aims to expand this small set gamma-ray flare observations by (1) using new techniques to study flares obscured by high-background counts in the existing RHESSI dataset and (2) providing new observations through the development and flight of the Gamma-Ray Imager/Polarimeter for Solar Flares (GRIPS) instrument.

In the study of astronomical transients, deriving knowledge from discovery is a multifaceted process that includes real-time classification to identify new events of interest, deep, multi-wavelength follow-up of individual events, and the global analysis of multi-event catalogs. Here we present a body of work encompassing each of these steps as applied to the study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). First, we present our work on utilizing machine-learning algorithms on early-time metrics from the Swift satellite to inform the resource allocation of follow-up telescopes in order to optimize time spent on high-redshift GRB candidates. Next, we show broadband observations and analysis of the early-time afterglow of GRB 120119A, utilizing data obtained with a dozen telescope facilities both in space and on the ground. This event exhibits extreme red-to-blue color change in the first few minutes after the trigger at levels unseen in prior afterglows, and our model fits of this phenomenon reveal the best support yet for the direct detection of dust destruction in the local environment of a GRB. Finally, we present results from the PAIRITEL early-time near-infrared (NIR) afterglow catalog. The 1.3 meter PAIRITEL has autonomously observed 14 GRBs in under 3 minutes after the burst, yielding a homogenous sample of early-time JHK_s light curves. Our analysis of these events provides constraints on the early-time NIR GRB afterglow luminosity function and gives insight into the importance of dust extinction in the suppression of some optical afterglows.

The study of the evolutionary behaviour of X-ray selected blazars (Beckmann & Wolter 2001; Beckmann et al. 2002, 2003b; Beckmann 2003) shows that their evolution is not as strongly negative as indicated by previous studies. The overall luminosity function is consistent with no evolution in the 0.1−2.4 keV band as seen by ROSAT/PSPC. There is still a difference compared to the luminosity function of FSRQ and LBL, which seem to show a positive evolution, indicating that they have been more luminous and/or numerous at cosmological distances. We indicated a scenario in order to explain this discrepancy, in which the high luminous FSRQ develop into the fainter LBL and finally into the BL Lac objects with high frequency peaks in their spectral energy distribution but overall low bolometric luminosity.

Studying the variability pattern of hard X-ray selected Seyfert galaxies, we actually found differences between type 1 and type 2 objects, in the sense that type 2 seemed to be more variable (Beckmann et al. 2007a). This breaking of the unified model is caused by the different average luminosity of the absorbed and unabsorbed sources, as discussed in Sect. 4.7.3. This can be explained by a larger inner disk radius when the AGN core is most active (the so-called receding disc model).

The work on the sample characteristics of hard X-ray detected AGN also led to the proof that the average intrinsic spectra of type 1 and type 2 objects are the same when reflection processes are taken into account (Beckmann et al. 2009d). This also explains why in the past Seyfert 2 objects were seen to have harder X-ray spectra than Seyfert 1, as the stronger reflection hump in the type 2 objects makes the spectra appear to be flatter, although the underlying continuum is the same.

Further strong evidence for the unification scheme comes from the observation of a fundamental plane which connects type 1 and type 2 objects smoothly (Beckmann et al. 2009d). In addition, in the case of the Seyfert 1.9 galaxy MCG-05-23-016 I showed that the spectral energy distribution of this source and its accretion rate is similar to that of a Galactic binary (Beckmann et al. 2008a).

Throughout the studies I have shown that the intrinsic spectral shape appears to be very stable on weeks to year time scale (Beckmann et al. 2004d, 2005b, 2007b, 2008a). This implies that the overall geometry of the AGN over these time scales did not change dramatically. The variations in intensity can then be explained in two ways: either the amount of material emitting the hard X-rays varies, or the amount of plasma visible to the observer varied, e.g. through different orientation of the disk with respect to the observer. In an upcoming paper we will show though, that NGC 4151 indeed also shows different spectral states, similar to the low-hard versus high-soft spectra in Galactic black hole binaries (Lubinski et al. 2010). A similar result seems to emerge from our INTEGRAL studies on NGC 2110 (Beckmann & Do Cao 2011). For INTEGRAL's AO-8 I have submitted a proposal in order to study spectral states in the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 2992, which seems to show a state change over the past 5 years as seen in Swift/BAT longterm monitoring.

The work on the luminosity function of AGN at hardest X-rays (Beckmann et al. 2006d) had a large impact on our understanding of the cosmic X-ray background. As this was the first study of its kind, it showed for the first time that indeed the fraction of highly obscured Compton thick AGN is much lower than expected before the launch of INTEGRAL and Swift. The X-ray luminosity function we revealed is indeed not consistent with the source population seen by INTEGRAL (Beckmann et al. 2006a, 2009d; Sazonov et al. 2007) and Swift (Tueller et al. 2008) being the only contributors to the cosmic hard X-ray background. Thus other sources outside the parameter space observable by these missions have to contribute significantly to the cosmic X-ray background. Our work on the luminosity function triggered several other studies on this issue. The subsequent derived luminosity functions by other groups (Sazonov et al. 2007; Tueller et al. 2008; Paltani et al. 2008) are consistent with our findings.

This also gave rise to an increased interest in the exact shape of the Cosmic X-ray background around its peak at 30 keV, triggering several attempts to a new measurement. Background studies were presented based on a Earth-occultation observation by INTEGRAL (Churazov et al. 2007, 2008; Türler et al. 2010) and by Swift (Ajello et al. 2008).

The understanding of the emission processes in AGN requires knowledge over a wide range of the spectral energy distribution (SED). In studies using CGRO/EGRET and Fermi/LAT data I derived the SED for blazars and non-blazars towards the gamma-ray range (Beckmann 2003; Beckmann et al. 2004b, 2010b). The work on the LAT data not only presented the gamma-ray detection of five gamma-ray blazars (QSO B0836+710, RX J1111.5+3452, H 1426+428, RX J1924.8-2914, and PKS 2149-306) for the first time, but also showed the potential in the combination of INTEGRAL and Fermi data. In the case of Cen A I derived the total energy output of the inverse Compton component based on the combined LAT, ISGRI, and JEM-X data, showing evidence for a spectral break at several hundred keV (Beckmann et al. 2010b).
In addition I successfully showed that gamma-ray blazars can be predicted through the study of their synchrotron branch at energies below 2 keV (Beckmann 2003 and this work).

Contributions of mine to research in fields other than AGN include the study of INTEGRAL detected gamma-ray bursts (e.g. Beckmann et al. 2003a, 2004a, 2008b, 2009a). Here and in collaboration with other colleagues I showed the potential of INTEGRAL data on GRB research. In the field of Galactic X-ray binaries I published one of the first Swift results on a newly discovered highly absorbed HMXB, IGR J16283-4838 (Beckmann et al. 2005a, 2006b). I also contributed significantly to analysis of many other Galactic sources, as shown in Section 4.6.1.