No Arabic abstract
The GRAPES-3 muon telescope located in Ooty, India records 4x10^9 muons daily. These muons are produced by interaction of primary cosmic rays (PCRs) in the atmosphere. The high statistics of muons enables GRAPES-3 to make precise measurement of various sun-induced phenomenon including coronal mass ejections (CME), Forbush decreases, geomagnetic storms (GMS) and atmosphere acceleration during the overhead passage of thunderclouds. However, the understanding and interpretation of observed data requires Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of PCRs and subsequent development of showers in the atmosphere. CORSIKA is a standard MC simulation code widely used for this purpose. However, these simulations are time consuming as large number of interactions and decays need to be taken into account at various stages of shower development from top of the atmosphere down to ground level. Therefore, computing resources become an important consideration particularly when billion of PCRs need to be simulated to match the high statistical accuracy of the data. During the GRAPES-3 simulations, it was observed that over 60% of simulated events dont really reach the Earths atmosphere. The geomagnetic field (GMF) creates a threshold to PCRs called cutoff rigidity Rc, a direction dependent parameter below which PCRs cant reach the Earths atmosphere. However, in CORSIKA there is no provision to set a direction dependent threshold. We have devised an efficient method that has taken into account of this Rc dependence. A reduction by a factor ~3 in simulation time and ~2 in output data size was achieved for GRAPES-3 simulations. This has been incorporated in CORSIKA version v75600 onwards. Detailed implementation of this along the potential benefits are discussed in this work.
Low energy ground-based cosmic ray air shower experiments generally have energy threshold in the range of a few tens to a few hundreds of TeV. The shower observables are measured indirectly with an array of detectors. The atmospheric absorption of low energy secondaries limits their detection frequencies at the Earths surface. However, due to selection effects, a tiny fraction of low energy showers, which are produced in the lower atmosphere can reach the observational level. But, due to less information of shower observables, the reconstruction of these showers are arduous. Hence, it is believed that direct measurements by experiments aboard on satellites and balloon flights are more reliable at low energies. Despite having very small efficiency ($sim$0.1%) at low energies, the large acceptance ($sim$5 m$^2$sr) of GRAPES-3 experiment allows observing primary cosmic rays down below to $sim$1 TeV and opens up the possibility to measure primary energy spectrum spanning from a few TeV to beyond cosmic ray knee (up to 10$^{16}$ eV), covering five orders of magnitude. The GRAPES-3 energy threshold for primary protons through Monte Carlo simulations are calculated, which gives reasonably good agreement with data. Furthermore, the total efficiencies and acceptance are also calculated for protons primaries. The ability of GRAPES-3 experiment to cover such a broader energy range may provide a unique handle to bridge the energy spectrum between direct measurements at low energies and indirect measurements at ultra-high energies.
The angular resolution of an extensive air shower (EAS) array plays a critical role in determining its sensitivity for the detection of point $gamma$-ray sources in the multi-TeV energy range. The GRAPES-3 an EAS array located at Ooty in India (11.4$^{circ}$N, 76.7$^{circ}$E, 2200 m altitude) is designed to study $gamma$-rays in the TeV-PeV energy range. It comprises of a dense array of 400 plastic scintillators deployed over an area of 25000 m$^2$ and a large area (560 m$^2$) muon telescope. A new statistical method allowed real time determination of the propagation delay of each detector in the GRAPES-3 array. The shape of shower front is known to be curved and here the details of a new method developed for accurate measurement of the shower front curvature is presented. These two developments have led to a sizable improvement in the angular resolution of GRAPES-3 array. It is shown that the curvature depends on the size and age of an EAS. By employing two different techniques, namely, the odd-even and the left-right methods, independent estimates of the angular resolution are obtained. The odd-even method estimates the best achievable resolution of the array. For obtaining the angular resolution, the left-right method is used after implementing the size and age dependent curvature corrections. A comparison of the angular resolution as a function of EAS energy by these two methods shows them be virtually indistinguishable. The angular resolution of GRAPES-3 array is 47$^{prime}$ for energies E$>$5 TeV and improves to 17$^{prime}$ at E$>$100 TeV and finally approaching 10$^{prime}$ at E$>$500 TeV.
This article presents an original methodology for the prediction of steady turbulent aerodynamic fields. Due to the important computational cost of high-fidelity aerodynamic simulations, a surrogate model is employed to cope with the significant variations of several inflow conditions. Specifically, the Local Decomposition Method presented in this paper has been derived to capture nonlinear behaviors resulting from the presence of continuous and discontinuous signals. A combination of unsupervised and supervised learning algorithms is coupled with a physical criterion. It decomposes automatically the input parameter space, from a limited number of high-fidelity simulations, into subspaces. These latter correspond to different flow regimes. A measure of entropy identifies the subspace with the expected strongest non-linear behavior allowing to perform an active resampling on this low-dimensional structure. Local reduced-order models are built on each subspace using Proper Orthogonal Decomposition coupled with a multivariate interpolation tool. The methodology is assessed on the turbulent two-dimensional flow around the RAE2822 transonic airfoil. It exhibits a significant improvement in term of prediction accuracy for the Local Decomposition Method compared with the classical method of surrogate modeling for cases with different flow regimes.
The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability serves as a simple, well-defined setup for assessing the accuracy of different numerical methods for solving the equations of hydrodynamics. We use it to extend our previous analysis of the convergence and the numerical dissipation in models of the propagation of waves and in the tearing-mode instability in magnetohydrodynamic models. To this end, we perform two-dimensional simulations with and without explicit physical viscosity at different resolutions. A comparison of the growth of the modes excited by our initial perturbations allows us to estimate the effective numerical viscosity of two spatial reconstruction schemes (fifth-order monotonicity preserving and second-order piecewise linear schemes).
We investigate the use of parabolic equation (PE) methods for solving radio-wave propagation in polar ice. PE methods provide an approximate solution to Maxwells equations, in contrast to full-field solutions such as finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) methods, yet provide a more complete model of propagation than simple geometric ray-tracing (RT) methods that are the current state of the art for simulating in-ice radio detection of neutrino-induced cascades. PE are more computationally efficient than FDTD methods, and more flexible than RT methods, allowing for the inclusion of diffractive effects, and modeling of propagation in regions that cannot be modeled with geometric methods. We present a new PE approximation suited to the in-ice case. We conclude that current ray-tracing methods may be too simplistic in their treatment of ice properties, and their continued use could overestimate experimental sensitivity for in-ice neutrino detection experiments. We discuss the implications for current in-ice Askaryan-type detectors and for the upcoming Radar Echo Telescope; two families of experiments for which these results are most relevant. We suggest that PE methods be investigated further for in-ice radio applications.