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The Fermi-LAT (Large Area Telescope) gamma-ray space observatory was launched in June 2008 and has been continuously operating since. By far the brightest gamma-ray source in the sky for Fermi is the Earth. This emission is produced by the interactions between cosmic-ray (CR) particles and the Earth's atmosphere. Various properties of this emission have been measured with unprecedented details. Its energy spectrum is used to infer the spectrum of CR proton. The correlations between the thickness of the atmosphere and the solar cycle are tested by observing the time variation of its profile shape. Also, Fermi has demonstrated an excellent capacity to detect electrons and positrons. This enables the measurements of separate CR electrons and positrons spectra between 20 - 200 GeV, using the geomagnetic field to differentiate the charge sign. The result shows that the positron fraction is increasing with energy in this energy range, which strongly contradicts our standard models of CR productions and propagations. The interpretation of the excess positrons is still at the frontier of current CR physics research. It may be a sign of new phenomena, such as dark matter annihilation signal, or normal astrophysical sources in the local universe that we have to better understand.
Real breakthrough during last 1-1.5 years in cosmic ray electrons: ATIC, HESS, Pamela, and finally Fermi-LAT. New quality data have made it possible to start quantitative modeling. With the new data more puzzles than before on CR electrons origin. Need "multi-messenger" campaign: electrons, positrons, gammas, X-ray, radio, neutrino... It is viable that we are dealing with at least two distinct mechanisms of "primary" electron (both signs) production: a softer spectrum of negative electrons, and a harder spectrum of both e(+)+e(-). Exotic (e.g. DM) origin is not ruled out. Upper limits on CR electrons anisotropy are set. Good perspectives to have the Fermi LAT results on proton spectrum and positron fraction.
Although cosmic rays do not point back to their sources, the distribution of their arrival directions can be used to constrain propagation models, study the distribution of their sources, and probe the structure of the local interstellar environment. A small, part-per-mille, anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays has been measured at both large and small angular scales by many experiments. Diffusion theory predicts a dipole anisotropy, but decades of observations have resulted in measurements at least an order of magnitude below this naive prediction. Solving the cosmic-ray anisotropy problem has proven difficult, in part due to observational biases of ground-based measurements that render physical information about the anisotropy inaccessible. Spaced-based observatories can provide new information to help shed light on the origin of the anisotropy. In particular, they can offer all-sky measurements that constrain the full two-dimensional phase of the anisotropy, while ground-based experiments only measure the anisotropy along right ascension. The first ever search for cosmic-ray proton anisotropy using the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) is presented in this thesis. The LAT's wide field of view, large effective area, and long exposure time have resulted in the largest data set of primary protons recorded by any instrument. A search for cosmic-ray proton anisotropy is performed using eight years of LAT data from 78 GeV to almost 10 TeV in energy. As the first analysis of its kind using LAT data, a custom event selection suitable for an anisotropy search was developed and systematics unique to this measurement were studied for the first time. The final data set, comprised of 179 million protons, is the largest full-sky, single instrument data set studying anisotropy at these energies to date, capable of probing dipole anisotropy below an amplitude of $10^{-3}$. It is also the most sensitive data set to the declination component of the anisotropy of any experiment to date. We measure a dipole amplitude $\delta = 3.9 \times 10^{-4}$ with a p-value of 0.01 (pre-trials) for protons with a minimum energy of 78 GeV. The weak statistical excess makes it difficult to rule out signal or systematic interpretation of the measurement. We therefore discuss various systematic effects that could give rise to the dipole excess and calculate upper limits on the dipole amplitude as a function of minimum energy. The 95\% CL upper limit on the dipole amplitude is $\delta_{UL}=1.3\times 10^{-3}$ for protons with a minimum energy of 78 GeV and $\delta_{UL}=1.2 \times 10^{-3}$ for protons with a minimum energy of 251 GeV.
In the first part, the book gives an up-to-date summary of the observational data. In the second part, it deals with the kinetic description of cosmic ray plasma. The underlying diffusion-convection transport equation, which governs the coupling between cosmic rays and the background plasma, is derived and analyzed in detail. In the third part, several applications of the solutions of the transport equation are presented and how key observations in cosmic ray physics can be accounted for is demonstrated.
Recent accurate measurements of cosmic-ray (CR) species by ATIC-2, CREAM, and PAMELA reveal an unexpected hardening in the proton and He spectra above a few hundred GeV, a gradual softening of the spectra just below a few hundred GeV, and a harder spectrum of He compared to that of protons. These newly-discovered features may offer a clue to the origin of high-energy CRs. We use the ${\it Fermi}$ Large Area Telescope observations of the $\gamma$-ray emission from the Earth's limb for an indirect measurement of the local spectrum of CR protons in the energy range $\sim 90~$GeV-$6~$TeV (derived from a photon energy range $15~$GeV-$1~$TeV). Our analysis shows that single power law and broken power law spectra fit the data equally well and yield a proton spectrum with index $2.68 \pm 0.04$ and $2.61 \pm 0.08$ above $\sim 200~$GeV, respectively.
The Milagro gamma-ray observatory is a water Cherenkov detector with an energy response between 100 GeV and 100 TeV. While the major scientific goals of Milagro were to detect and study cosmic sources of TeV gamma rays, Milagro has made measurements important to furthering our understanding of the cosmic radiation that pervades our Galaxy. Milagro has made the first measurement of the Galactic diffuse emission in the TeV energy band. In the Cygnus Region we measure a flux ≈2.7 times that predicted by GALPROP. Milagro has also made measurements of the anisotropy of the arrival directions of the local cosmic radiation. On large scales the measurements made by Milagro agree with those previously reported by the Tibet AS[gamma] array. However, we have also discovered a time dependence to this anisotropy, perhaps due to solar modulation. On smaller scales, ≈10 degrees, we have detected two regions of excess. These excesses have a spectrum that is inconsistent with the local cosmic-ray spectrum.
We report on measurements of the cosmic-ray induced?-ray emission of Earth's atmosphere by the Large Area Telescope onboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The LAT has observed the Earth during its commissioning phase and with a dedicated Earth-limb following observation in September 2008. These measurements yielded H"6.4 x 106 photons with energies> 100 MeV and H"250 hours total livetime for the highest quality data selection. This allows the study of the spatial and spectral distributions of these photons with unprecedented detail. The spectrum of the emission - often referred to as Earth albedo gamma-ray emission - has a power-law shape up to 500 GeV with spectral index? = 2.79 ± 0.06.
These are the proceedings of the Sant Cugat Forum 2nd Workshop on Cosmic-ray Induced Phenomenology in Stellar Environments, held April 16-19, 2012. The aim of this Workshop was to address the current knowledge and challenges of high-energy emission from stellar environments at all scales and provide a comprehensive review of the state of the field from the observational to the theoretical perspectives. In the meeting, the prospects for possible observations with planned instruments across the multi-wavelength spectrum were analyzed and also how they impact on our understanding of these systems.
The original work presented in this thesis constitutes an important contribution to modern Cosmic Ray (CR) physics, and comes during one of the most exciting periods of this field. The first part introduces a new numerical code (DRAGON) to model the CR propagation in our Galaxy. The code is then used to perform a combined analysis of CR data, making it possible to determine their propagation properties with unprecedented accuracy. The second part is dedicated to a theoretical interpretation of the recent crucial experimental results on cosmic electron and positron spectra (PAMELA, Fermi-LAT experiments). Using the tools developed in the first part of the thesis, the author convincingly argues for the existence of a new spectral component, which could arise either from local astrophysical sources, such as pulsars, or from Dark Matter annihilation or decay. This thesis is a highly advanced work; the methods, analysis and results are clearly and carefully presented. This work is set to become an important reference document for any future work in this area.
In the last years we have witnessed how the field of Cosmology has experienced a metamorphosis. From being essentially the search for three numbers (the expansion rate, the deceleration parameter, and the cosmological constant), it has become a precision science. This scientific discipline is determined to unravel the most minute details of the elementary processes that took place during the most primitive stages of the Universe and also of the mechanisms driving the cosmic expansion and the growth of structures at the largest scales. To achieve these goals one needs not only the development of new experimental and observational techniques but also a deep understanding of the underlying theoretical frameworks. This book gathers the work of leading experts in these fields and provides a broad view of some of the most relevant open questions faced by Cosmology at the beginning of the twenty-first century.