A Novel Cloud-Based Framework For Standardized Simulations In The Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO)

The capability of water Cherenkov detectors arrays of the LAGO project to detect Gamma-Ray Burst and high energy astrophysics sources

Development of a web monitor for the water Cherenkov detectors array of the LAGO project

The Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO) is a widespread cosmic ray observatory which uses water-Cherenkov Detectors (WCD) deployed in nine Latin American countries, being able to detect transient events or long term modulation effects simultaneously at places having different geomagnetic rigidity cut-offs and altitudes. In this work, results of studies on cosmic ray muon flux variations during the Forbush decrease of 22 June 2015 registered by the LAGO detector installed at the University of Campinas, Brazil, ${22^{o}49^{'}03^{}S, 47^{o}04^{'}11^{}W}$ at 650 m a.s.l., the TANCA detector, are presented. TANCA is a cylindrical polyethylene tank of 10 $m^2$ containing a sealed liner with a reflective inner surface. The liner contains 11400 liters of ultra-pure water. Cherenkov light produced by the passage of particles through the water is collected by three nine-inch-diameter photomultiplier tubes. The experimental setup and detector performance is also presented. The studies on Forbush decrease contain comparisons with neutron monitors and indices of Earth's magnetic activity.

The data acquisition system of the Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO)

La Colaboración LAGO (Latin American Giant Observatory) tiene como objetivo la detección de fotones de alta energía provenientes de GRBs (Gamma Ray Bursts) utilizando detectores Cherenkov de agua (WCD). Para alcanzar la sensibilidad necesaria para la recolección de datos los WCDs deben ser instalados en sitios de altura mayor a 4000 msnm. En este trabajo se describe el diseño de un detector WCD autónomo para su instalación en las faldas del volcán Chimborazo (4310 msnm) desde la mecánica del tanque, su sistema de adquisición y transferencia de datos, generación de energía eléctrica y sistemas de backup para poder garantizar el funcionamiento continuo en el tiempo. Se estima que el WCD podrá funcionar por un período máximo de 18 meses sin mantenimiento, el tratamiento de purificación del agua aumenta considerablemente la transparencia incrementando el numero de fotoelectrones en un factor 2 comparado con otras implementaciones.

The Space Weather program of the Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO) Collaboration was designed to study the variation of the flux of atmospheric secondary particles at ground level produced during the interaction of cosmic rays with the air. This work complements and expands the inference capabilities of the LAGO detection network to identify the influence of solar activity on the particle flux, at places having different geomagnetic rigidity cut‐offs and atmospheric depths. This program is developed through a series of Monte Carlo sequential simulations to compute the intensity spectrum of the various components of the radiation field on the ground. A key feature of these calculations is that we performed detailed radiation transport computations as a function of incident direction, time, altitude, and latitude and longitude. Magnetic rigidity calculations and corrections for geomagnetic field activity are established by using the MAGNETOCOSMICS code, and the estimation of the flux of secondaries at ground level is implemented by using the CORSIKA code; thus, we can examine the local peculiarities in the penumbral regions with a more realistic description of the atmospheric and geomagnetic response in these complex regions of the rigidity space. As an example of our calculation scheme, we report some result on the flux at ground level for two LAGO locations: Bucaramanga, Colombia, and San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, for the geomagnetically active period of May 2005.

In this paper, we calculate geomagnetic cutoff rigidities during the strong magnetic storm of March 23–24, 2023, using 1) the spectrographic global survey method based on observational data from cosmic ray recording by the global network of stations (Rsgs); 2) numerical trajectory calculations in a model magnetic field of the magnetosphere (Reff). The geomagnetic cutoff rigidity has been determined for nine cosmic ray stations at different latitudes. We calculated the correlations of the variations in the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity ΔRsgs and ΔReff with magnetic and dynamic solar wind parameters and the geomagnetic activity indices Dst and Kp. It has been found that the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity calculated by both methods correlate most strongly with Dst and the electromagnetic parameters of the solar wind. No significant correlation with the dynamic parameters was observed. The analysis has shown that the response of ΔRsgs to the controlling magnetic parameters and Dst changes with latitude of the observation station: the correlation reaches its highest values at midlatitudes and drops significantly toward the equator. The correlations of ΔReff calculated by the model do not reveal a latitudinal dependence.

Today's geomagnetic field can prevent energetic particles, including solar energetic particles and galactic cosmic rays, from directly hitting the Earth's atmosphere. However, when the geomagnetic field strength is significantly decreased during geomagnetic field excursions or reversals, the geomagnetic field shielding effect becomes less prominent. Geomagnetic cutoff rigidity, as a quantitative estimation of the shielding effect, can be calculated using trajectory tracing or theoretical equations. We use a recent high‐resolution continuous geomagnetic field model (LSMOD.2) to study the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity during the Laschamps excursion. Global grids of the geomagnetic cutoff rigidities are presented, in particular for the excursion midpoint when the geomagnetic field is weak and not dipole‐dominated anymore at Earth's surface. We compare the cutoff rigidity calculation results between a trajectory tracing program and theoretical equations and we find that the influence of the non‐dipole component of the geomagnetic field cannot be ignored during the excursion. Our results indicate that the exposure of Earth's atmosphere to energetic particles of cosmic and solar origin is high and nearly independent of latitude in the middle of the Laschamps excursion. Our results will be useful for future studies associated with cosmic radiation dose rate and cosmogenic isotope production rate during the Laschamps excursion.

Using data of satellite and ground-based cosmic ray (CR) observations at the worldwide network of neutron monitors, Forbush effects (FE) in November 2012 have been studied using the spectrographic global survey (SGS) method. The SGS method allows investigating variations in the rigidity spectrum, anisotropy, and changes in the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity during every hour of observations. Data of ground-based measurements on the worldwide network of neutron monitors (41 stations) averaged over 1-hour intervals, and data from the GOES-15 satellite were used for the analysis. Relative changes in CR intensity with R = 4 GV in the Geocentric Solar Ecliptic coordinate system for different time points of the period studied are presented.

The purpose of this study was to determine how the characteristics of the data acquisition (DAQ) electronics of a Compton camera (CC) affect the quality of the recorded prompt gamma (PG) interaction data and the reconstructed images, during clinical proton beam delivery. We used the Monte-Carlo-plus-Detector-Effect (MCDE) model to simulate the delivery of a 150 MeV clinical proton pencil beam to a tissue-equivalent plastic phantom. With the MCDE model we analyzed how the recorded PG interaction data changed as two characteristics of the DAQ electronics of a CC were changed: (1) the number of data readout channels; and (2) the active charge collection, readout, and reset time. As the proton beam dose rate increased, the number of recorded PG single-, double-, and triple-scatter events decreased by a factor of 60× for the current DAQ configuration of the CC. However, as the DAQ readout channels were increased and the readout/reset timing decreased, the number of recorded events decreased by <5× at the highest clinical dose rate. The increased number of readout channels and reduced readout/reset timing also resulted in higher quality recorded data. That is, a higher percentage of the recorded double- and triple-scatters were "true" events (caused by a single incident gamma) and not "false" events (caused by multiple incident gammas). The increase in the number and the quality of recorded data allowed higher quality PG images to be reconstructed even at the highest clinical dose rates.

A control and data acquisition system has been designed for the CDF silicon vertex detector (SVX) at Fermilab. The system controls the operations of the SVX Rev D integrated circuit (S.A. Kleinfeeder et al., 1988) that is used to instrument a 46000 microstrip silicon detector (W.C. Corithers et al., 1990). The system consists of a Fastbus sequencer, a crate controller, and digitizer modules. The authors describe the hardware design for the CDF SVX data acquisition electronics. The method chosen for integrating the SVX detector system into the CDF data acquisition network and synchronization with the Fermilab collider beam crossings are discussed. The sequencer, controller, and digitizer are described. Error detection and diagnostics are considered.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Neutron scattering experiments are a powerful probe to investigate a phenomenon of the materials and life science. The Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility (MLF) of the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) is the one of the most intense pulsed neutron experimental facility in the world. In MLF, 18 neutron experimental instruments have already been under operation and various measurements are carried out by many users. These instruments are composed of neutron detectors, sample environment and neutron optics devices. The signals from these components and the neutron source are transformed into the digital signals by the data acquisition (DAQ) electronics [1] and recorded as the event data with the time in the DAQ computers by “DAQ Middleware” [2]. The DAQ system produces the enormous measurement event data (~GB) under various measurement conditions. Simultaneously, the measurement meta-data indicating each measurement condition is recorded in XML format by the MLF control software framework “IROHA” [3]. These measurement event data and meta-data are collected in the MLF common storage and cataloged by the MLF Experimental Database based on the commercial XML database. The database system provides the web interface for the experiment data management and the remote data analysis for users. In this presentation, we will show the details of the DAQ system and the experiment data management system at MLF, J-PARC.

Aim We explore the utility of newly available optical and microwave remote sensing data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and QuikSCAT (QSCAT) instruments for species distribution modelling at regional to continental scales. Using eight Neotropical species from three taxonomic groups, we assess the extent to which remote sensing data can improve predictions of their geographic distributions. For two bird species, we investigate the specific contributions of different types of remote sensing variables to the predictions and model accuracy at the regional scale, where the benefits of the MODIS and QSCAT satellite data are expected to be most significant.Location South America, with a focus on the tropical and subtropical Andes and the Amazon Basin.Methods Potential geographic distributions of eight species, namely two birds, two mammals and four trees, were modelled with the maxent algorithm at 1‐km resolution over the South American continent using climatic and remote sensing data separately and combined. For each species and model scenario, we assess model performance by testing the agreement between observed and simulated distributions across all thresholds and, in the case of the two focal bird species, at selected thresholds.Results Quantitative performance tests showed that models built with remote sensing and climatic layers in isolation performed well in predicting species distributions, suggesting that each of these data sets contains useful information. However, predictions created with a combination of remote sensing and climatic layers generally resulted in the best model performance across the three taxonomic groups. In Ecuador, the inclusion of remote sensing data was critical in resolving the known geographically isolated populations of the two focal bird species along the steep Amazonian–Andean elevational gradients. Within remote sensing subsets, microwave‐based data were more important than optical data in the predictions of the two bird species.Main conclusions Our results suggest that the newly available remote sensing data (MODIS and QSCAT) have considerable utility in modelling the contemporary geographical distributions of species at both regional and continental scales and in predicting range shifts as a result of large‐scale land‐use change.

We presented a new method of the neutron monitors’ (NM’s) effective energy estimation based on the 27‑day galactic cosmic rays (GCR) variations: using AMS-02 measurements we study rigidity dependance of 27-day variations’ amplitude and calculate the energy value so that the variability of the GCR particles at this energy is equal to that of the NM’s count rate. We examined how NM’s effective energy depends on the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity using data of several NM.

Using data (uncorrected for the temperature effect) from the global network of neutron monitors (GNNM), along with data from the Yakutsk muon telescope complex and the muon hodoscope URAGAN (Moscow), we have applied a modified spectrographic global survey (SGS) method to the 2018 August event in order to split cosmic ray variations into components of primary, magnetospheric, and atmospheric origin. We obtained time variations in the 4 GV-rigidity primary particle isotropic flux and pitch-angle anisotropy, as well as in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) orientation. We also showed variations in the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity (GCR) in Irkutsk.&#x0D; Using the obtained data on the changes in the planetary system of GCR within a simple model of a bounded magnetosphere, we have calculated some parameters of magnetospheric current systems, namely, the ring current radius, the magnetopause current radius, and the Dst index.