No Arabic abstract
We used a backtracing code to reconstruct particle trajectory inside the Earth Magnetosphere during the last solar active period (2011 and 2012) when very high Solar Wind pressure values were measured. We compared our results on AMS-02 proton and electron data with 2 different External Field models, namely Tsyganenko 1996 (T96) and 2005 (T05), both for quiet (defined as the periods when the solar wind pressure is below the average value, set at 2nPa) and active periods. Although T05 has been specifically designed for storm events, at high energy the particle trajectory is similar for the two models. For instance at rigidities larger than 50 GV, the RMS of angular difference between reconstructed asymptotic direction outside the Magnetosphere is of the order of the millirad, while it increases at intermediate energies. We also confirmed, as a function of the pointing direction, the well known East-West effect on the trajectory of primary particles and on the access solid angle on the AMS detector.
Project 1640 is a high contrast near-infrared instrument probing the vicinities of nearby stars through the unique combination of an integral field spectrograph with a Lyot coronagraph and a high-order adaptive optics system. The extraordinary data reduction demands, similar those which several new exoplanet imaging instruments will face in the near future, have been met by the novel software algorithms described herein. The Project 1640 Data Cube Extraction Pipeline (PCXP) automates the translation of 3.8*10^4 closely packed, coarsely sampled spectra to a data cube. We implement a robust empirical model of the spectrograph focal plane geometry to register the detector image at sub-pixel precision, and map the cube extraction. We demonstrate our ability to accurately retrieve source spectra based on an observation of Saturns moon Titan.
The AMS-02 experiment will be installed on the International Space Station at an altitude of about 400 km in 2010 to measure for three years cosmic rays. The total acceptance including the electromagnetic calorimeter is 0.095 m$^2$sr. This work focuses on the anticoincidence counter system (ACC). The ACC is a single layer composed of 16 interlocking scintillator panels that surround the tracker inside the inner bore of the superconducting magnet. The ACC needs to detect particles that enter or exit the tracker through the sides with an efficiency of better than 99.99 %. This allows to reject particles that have not passed through all the subdetectors and may confuse the charge and momentum measurements which is important for an improvement of the antinuclei-measurements. In 2007/2008 all subdetectors were integrated into the AMS-02 experiment and atmospheric muons were collected. These data were used to determine the ACC detection efficiency.
This article aims at establishing new benchmark scenarios for Galactic cosmic-ray propagation in the GV-TV rigidity range, based on fits to the AMS-02 B/C data with the USINE v3.5 propagation code. We employ a new fitting procedure, cautiously taking into account data systematic error correlations in different rigidity bins and considering Solar modulation potential and leading nuclear cross-section as nuisance parameters. We delineate specific low, intermediate, and high-rigidity ranges that can be related to both features in the data and peculiar microphysics mechanisms resulting in spectral breaks. We single out a scenario which yields excellent fits to the data and includes all the presumably relevant complexity, the BIG model. This model has two limiting regimes: (i) the SLIM model, a minimal diffusion-only setup, and (ii) the QUAINT model, a convection-reacceleration model where transport is tuned by non-relativistic effects. All models lead to robust predictions in the high-energy regime ($gtrsim10$GV), i.e. independent of the propagation scenario: at $1sigma$, the diffusion slope $delta$ is $[0.43-0.53]$, whereas $K_{10}$, the diffusion coefficient at 10GV, is $[0.26-0.36]$kpc$^2$Myr$^{-1}$; we confirm the robustness of the high-energy break, with a typical value $Delta_hsim 0.2$. We also find a hint for a similar (reversed) feature at low rigidity around the B/C peak ($sim 4$GV) which might be related to some effective damping scale in the magnetic turbulence.
The cosmic-ray flux of positrons is measured with high precision by the space-borne particle spectrometer AMS-02. The hypothesis that pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) can significantly contribute to the excess of the positron ($e^+$) cosmic-ray flux has been consolidated after the observation of a $gamma$-ray emission at TeV energies of a few degree size around Geminga and Monogem PWNe. In this work we undertake massive simulations of galactic pulsars populations, adopting different distributions for their position in the Galaxy, intrinsic physical properties, pair emission models, in order to overcome the incompleteness of the ATNF catalogue. We fit the $e^+$ AMS-02 data together with a secondary component due to collisions of primary cosmic rays with the interstellar medium. We find that several mock galaxies have a pulsar population able to explain the observed $e^+$ flux, typically by few, bright sources. We determine the physical parameters of the pulsars dominating the $e^+$ flux, and assess the impact of different assumptions on radial distributions, spin-down properties, Galactic propagation scenarios and $e^+$ emission time.
We investigate the solar modulation effect with the long time cosmic ray proton and helium spectrum measured by AMS-02 on the time scale of a Bartels rotation (27 days) between May 2011 and May 2017. The time-span covers the negative heliospheric magnetic field polarity cycle, the polarity reversal period and the positive polarity cycle. The unprecedented accuracy of AMS-02 observation data provide a good opportunity to improve the understanding of the time dependent solar modulation effect. In this work, a two-dimensional solar modulation model is used to compute the propagation of cosmic rays in the heliosphere. Some important ingredients of the model which reflect the global heliospherical environment are taken from the observations. The propagation equation is numerically solved with the pubic Solarprop code. We find that the drift effect is suppressed during the high solar activity period but nearly recovered in the first half of 2017. The time-dependent rigidity dependence of the mean free path is critical to reproduce the observations between August 2012 and October 2015.