Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Temporal and spectral evolutionary features of gamma-ray bursts detected by theFermiGamma-Ray Space Telescope
    (2019) Tak, Donggeun; McEnery, Julie; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful electromagnetic events in universe. GRBs are powered by either core-collapse of massive stars or binary mergers of two compact objects. These progenitor systems are believed to launch relativistic, collimated jets, which produce short, bright gamma-ray flashes (prompt emission) and long-lived, fading emission (afterglow) in the broad energy band from radio to gamma-rays. Even though the characteristics of the prompt emission and the afterglow have been vigorously studied, many details of the physics of GRBs remain uncertain. The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope(Fermi) provides invaluable data for studying GRBs with the help of a very wide field of view and broad energy coverage from the hard X-ray to gamma-ray band. Fermi consists of two instruments, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM; 8 keV–40 MeV) and the Large Area Telescope(LAT; 20 MeV– >300 GeV). In this thesis, I present dedicated analysis results on three bright GRBs: GRB 131108A, GRB 160709A, and GRB 190114C. Each of them shows its own evolution that includes the unusual and general features of GRBs. In addition, I performed two systematic studies using the full 10 year samples of LAT and GBM detected GRBs. For the first, I focused on the high-energy emission (>100 MeV) and its origin by tracking its temporal and spectral evolution. In the second, focusing on the prompt emission phase, I found an observational signature that originates in the geometry of the relativistic jet, which had been predicted but was previously unobserved.
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    An All-Sky Search for Bursts of Very High Energy Gamma Rays with HAWC
    (2016) Wood, Joshua Randall; Goodman, Jordan; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    A new ground-based wide-field extensive air shower array known as the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory promises a new window to monitoring the ~100 GeV gamma-ray sky with the potential for detecting a high energy spectral cutoff in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). It represents a roughly 15 times sensitivity gain over the previous generation of wide-field gamma-ray air shower instruments and is able to detect the Crab Nebula at high significance (>5 sigma) with each daily transit. Its wide field-of-view (~2 sr) and >95% uptime make it an ideal instrument for detecting GRB emission at ~100 GeV with an expectation for observing ~1 GRB per year based on existing measurements of GRB emission. An all-sky, self-triggered search for VHE emission produced by GRBs with HAWC has been developed. We present the results of this search on three characteristic GRB emission timescales, 0.2 seconds, 1 second, and 10 seconds, in the first year of the fully-populated HAWC detector which is the most sensitive dataset to date. No significant detections were found, allowing us to place upper limits on the rate of GRBs containing appreciable emission in the ~100 GeV band. These constraints exclude previously unexamined parameter space.
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    An All-Sky, Three-Flavor Search for Neutrinos from Gamma-Ray Bursts with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
    (2015) Hellauer, Robert Eugene; Sullivan, Gregory; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), defined by energy greater than 10^18 eV, have been observed for decades, but their sources remain unknown. Protons and heavy ions, which comprise cosmic rays, interact with galactic and intergalactic magnetic fields and, consequently, do not point back to their sources upon measurement. Neutrinos, which are inevitably produced in photohadronic interactions, travel unimpeded through the universe and disclose the directions of their sources. Among the most plausible candidates for the origins of UHECRs is a class of astrophysical phenomena known as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). GRBs are the most violent and energetic events witnessed in the observable universe. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located in the glacial ice 1450 m to 2450 m below the South Pole surface, is the largest neutrino detector in operation. IceCube detects charged particles, such as those emitted in high energy neutrino interactions in the ice, by the Cherenkov light radiated by these particles. The measurement of neutrinos of 100 TeV energy or greater in IceCube correlated with gamma-ray photons from GRBs, measured by spacecraft detectors, would provide evidence of hadronic interaction in these powerful phenomena and confirm their role in ultra high energy cosmic ray production. This work presents the first IceCube GRB-neutrino coincidence search optimized for charged-current interactions of electron and tau neutrinos as well as neutral-current interactions of all neutrino flavors, which produce nearly spherical Cherenkov light showers in the ice. These results for three years of data are combined with the results of previous searches over four years of data optimized for charged-current muon neutrino interactions, which produce extended Cherenkov light tracks. Several low significance events correlated with GRBs were detected, but are consistent with the background expectation from atmospheric muons and neutrinos. The combined results produce limits that place the strongest constraints thus far on models of neutrino and UHECR production in GRB fireballs.
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    Precursors in Gamma-ray Bursts Observed by Fermi
    (2015) Zhu, Sylvia; Shawhan, Peter; McEnery, Julie; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    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.
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    A Search For Muon Neutrinos Coincident With Gamma-Ray Bursts Using IceCube
    (2015) Richman, Michael David; Hoffman, Kara; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    We present constraints derived from a search of four years of IceCube data for a prompt neutrino flux from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). A single low-significance neutrino was found in coincidence with one of the 506 observed bursts, consistent with the expectation from atmospheric backgrounds. Although GRBs have been proposed as candidate sources for ultra-high energy cosmic rays, our limits on the neutrino flux disfavor much of the parameter space for the latest models. We also find that no more than ~1% of the recently observed astrophysical neutrino flux consists of prompt emission from GRBs that are potentially observable by existing satellites. These results currently represent world-leading constraints on a prompt neutrino flux from GRBs. In this thesis, we also introduce an original machine learning software package called pybdt. This implementation is now the de facto standard tool for machine-learning-based classification in IceCube analyses. Finally, we describe an extension of the unbinned likelihood method used in past searches to allow for the combination of data from different detector configurations with different background characteristics in the calculation of model constraints.
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    A Search for Muon Neutrinos from Gamma-Ray Bursts wih the IceCube 22-String Detector
    (2009) Roth, A Philip; Hoffman, Kara; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Two searches are conducted for muon neutrinos from Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) using the IceCube detector. Gamma-Ray Bursts are brief and transient emissions of keV/MeV radiation occuring with a rate of a few per day uniformly in the sky. Swift and other satellites of the Third Interplanetary Network (IPN3) detect these GRBs and send notices out via the GRB Coordinate Network (GCN). The fireball model describing the physics of GRBs predicts the emission of muon neutrinos from these bursts. IceCube is a cubic kilometer neutrino detector buried in the deep antarctic ice at the South Pole that can be used to find these prediceted but still unobserved neutrinos. It is sensitive to them by detecting Cherenkov light from secondary muons produced when the neutrinos interact in or near the instrumented volume. The construction of IceCube has been underway since the austral summer of 2004-2005 and will continue until 2011. The growing IceCube detector will soon be sensitivite to the high energy neutrino emission from GRBs that is predicted by the fireball model. A blind and triggered search of the 22-string IceCube data for this neutrino emission was conducted. The principal background to the observation of neutrinos in IceCube is muons generated in cosmic-ray air-showers in the atmosphere above the detector. Atmospheric neutrinos make up a separate irreducible background to the detection of extraterrestrial neutrinos. A binned stacked search of 41 bursts occuring in the northern hemisphere greatly reduces the muon background by looking for tracks moving up through the detector. The atmospheric neutrino background is greatly reduced by the temporal constraints of the search, making it effectively background free. 40 individual unbinned searches of bursts occuring in the southern hemisphere extend IceCube's sensitivity to the higher background regions above the horizon. No significant excesses over background expectations are found in either search. A 90% confidence upper limit on the neutrino fluence from northern hemisphere bursts is set at 6.52 x 10-3 erg cm-2 with 90% of the expected signal between 87.9 TeV and 10.4 PeV.