Measurement of helium isotopic composition in cosmic rays with AMS-02
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1036985799-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
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19.29 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
d3988e6648690e0315d7d1a913d7206d
Author(s)
Behlmann, Matthew Daniel
Advisor(s)
Paolo Zuccon.
Date Issued
2018
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
The isotopic composition of helium in cosmic ray fluxes provides valuable information about cosmic ray propagation through the Galaxy, which is of particular interest to indirect dark matter searches. Helium-3, mainly a secondary cosmic ray species, is primarily produced by spallation of heavier cosmic rays, such as primary helium-4, with interstellar matter. In six years of data taking, AMS has collected the largest available data set on fluxes of cosmic-ray helium. Events are selected to form a clean sample of galactic helium nuclei, for which velocity and rigidity give a measurement of particle mass that allows the measurement of relative isotope abundances. The resolution of measured mass is described in detail by template functions based on the underlying resolutions of the silicon tracker and ring-imaging Cerenkov detector measurements. This thesis presents a measurement of the cosmic ray helium isotope ratio 3 He/ 4He in the range 0.8-10 GeV/nucleon, as obtained through a template fitting approach on AMS data.
Description
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, 2018.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 137-145).
Subjects
Physics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
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