Summer Fellowships '23 Presentations 1/2

by Arturo Castaño (UAB Student), Emma Clarasó (Imperial College London Student), Roger Petit (UB Student)

Wednesday 15 Nov 2023, 13:00 → 14:00 Europe/Madrid

IFAE Seminar Room (IFAE)

The IFAE Summer Fellowship Programme offers undergraduate students the possibility of spending the summer as a physics researcher. The program has been running for 7 years now.

In this seminar, 3 students will report on their work done in this one-month stay.

1. An extended emulator for the Ly-ɑ Forest 1D flux power spectrum

Emma Clarasó, Imperial College London Student

The Lyman-ɑ Forest is a series of absorption lines observed in the spectra of quasars caused by gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM) over a large redshift range. It is used in cosmology to study dark energy, inflation, and neutrino masses. Interpreting the data from the Ly-ɑ Forest requires precise modelling of the thermal and ionization states of the IGM. Running a simulation for every point in the parameter space is impossible, and therefore precise interpolation is necessary. Emulation techniques employing a neural network architecture are used to perform this interpolation, enabling rapid predictions of the 1D Ly-ɑ flux power spectrum. During my month-long internship, I worked on a method to improve the precision of the emulator on the smaller range of scales.

2. Analysis of LST-1 mispointing in Crab Nebula observations

Roger Petit, UB Student

In the paper presenting the observations of the Crab Nebula with LST-1, a small discrepancy is seen between the expected and the observed point-spread function of the telescope. Nevertheless, the data is theoretically consistent with a variable Gaussian mispointing of 0.025°, so we conduct an analysis of this mispointing based on the data to investigate its nature and to adjust the obtained data. This analysis leads to a significant improvement in the deviation of the data regarding the vertical axis of the camera within a 20-minute observation run.

 

3. Experimental study of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) for the High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection (HERD)

Arturo Castaño, UAB Student

The High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection (HERD) is a space telescope being designed to observe high-energy gamma rays and cosmic rays. Composed of four major layers (SCD, PSD, FIT, Calo), I personally worked on testing the BETAs, which are the ASIC for the PSD and the FIT designed to generate a trigger signal whenever a particle or a gamma-ray arrives into the telescope. Many problems were found, such as repetitions in the acquired data, mixed values, shifting in the bit values or a trigger map not properly working. My main work revolved around the analysis of those problems as well as helping to solve them.

Analysis of LST-1 mispointing in Crab Nebula observations by Roger Petit.pdf An extended emulator for the Ly-ɑ Forest 1D flux power spectrum by Emma Clarasó.pdf Experimental study of the ASICs for the High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection (HERD) by Arturo Castaño.pdf