Date of Award

1-1-2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

Physics and Astronomy

First Advisor

Jonathan F. Ormes, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

John Krizmanic

Third Advisor

Davor Balzar

Fourth Advisor

Jennifer Hoffman

Fifth Advisor

Robert Stencel

Sixth Advisor

Rebecca Powell

Keywords

Boosted decision trees, Calorimetric Electron Telescope, Cosmic-rays, Fermi-LAT, Multivariate analysis, Particle identification

Abstract

Measurements of the cosmic ray electron spectrum have received much attention over the last decade as anomalies in both electron and positron observations have been detected independently by several experiments. The profound possible implications in the fields of high energy astrophysics and particle physics have allowed for many interpretations on the origin of these inconsistencies in the spectra. This research focuses on two space-borne cosmic radiation experiments at different stages in their mission lifetimes: the Calorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) and the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). We explore the proton-electron discriminating capabilities of the CALET instrument through Monte Carlo simulations. Additionally, we present our efforts in electron identification using dedicated information of the tracking region of the LAT, exploiting calibration data from the beam test campaign. Within both studies, we employ multivariate techniques to improve the identification of cosmic ray electrons from the vast background.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Aaron James Worley

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

138 p.

Discipline

Astrophysics, Particle Physics

Download



Share

COinS