Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-129).

La miniaturisation croissante des transistors MOS a rendu les mémoires RAM de plus en plus sensibles aux particules alpha émises par les éléments radioactifs naturellement présents dans les matériaux utilisés dans la fabrication de ces mémoires. En effet, au niveau du sol, le taux d'erreurs logiques déclenchées par ces particules est comparable à celui déclenché par les neutrons issus du rayonnement cosmique. L'objectif principal de ce travail de thèse est la mise au point de méthodes d'évaluation de ce taux et permettre par la suite de proposer des solutions technologiques. Ainsi, dans le cadre d'une approche théorique, nous avons développé des modèles permettant d'évaluer le taux des erreurs logiques déclenchées par les chaines de l'uranium et du thorium dans un état d'équilibre séculaire mais aussi de déséquilibre. Ceci passe par une identification des radioéléments critiques, c'est-à-dire ceux qui sont capables d'augmenter l'émissivité (et ainsi le taux d'erreurs d'aléas logiques) à des niveaux inacceptables pendant la durée de vie du composant. La prise en compte de l'état de déséquilibre des chaines de désintégration radioactive dans ce volet théorique permet une approche réaliste de la contamination. Nous avons également proposé une méthode expérimentale pour analyser l'évolution de l'état radioactif dans les matériaux utilisés dans la fabrication des mémoires. Dans cette approche expérimentale, nous avons combiné trois techniques de mesure complémentaires: la spectroscopie alpha, la spectroscopie gamma et l'ICPMS. / The increasing miniaturisation of MOS transistors has made RAM memories more and more sensitive to alpha particles emitted by radioactive elements naturally present in the materials used for memory fabrication. Indeed, at ground level, the soft error rate triggered by these particles is comparable to that triggered by neutrons from cosmic rays. The main purpose of this work aims to develop methods to evaluate this rate allowing thereafter suggesting technologies mitigations. Thus, in the context of a theoretical approach, we have developed models to estimate soft errors rate triggered by uranium and thorium chains in secular equilibrium but also disequilibrium state. This requires identification of critical radionuclides those are able to increase the emissivity (and thus the soft error rate) to unacceptable levels during device lifetime. Taking into account disequilibrium state of decay chains in theoretical study provides a realistic approach to the contamination. We have also proposed an experimental method to analyze the radioactive state evolution in materials used for memory fabrication. In this experimental approach, we have combined three complementary measurement techniques: alpha spectroscopy, gamma spectroscopy and ICPMS.

This thesis describes a timing calibration method for the detector array of the ALTO experiment. ALTO is a project currently at the prototype phase that aims to build a gamma-ray astronomical observatory at high-altitude in the Southern hemisphere. ALTO can be assumed as a hybrid system as each detector consists of a Water Cherenkov Detector (WCD) on top of a Scintillator Detector (SD), providing an increased signal to background discrimination compared to other WCD arrays. ALTO is planned to complement the Very-High-Energy (VHE) observations by the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma ray observatory that collects data from the Northern sky. By the time the full array of 1242 detectors is installed to the proposed site, ALTO together with HAWC and the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will serve as a state-of-the-art detection system for VHE gamma-rays combining the WCD and the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) techniques. When a VHE gamma-ray or cosmic-ray enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it initiates an Extensive Air Shower (EAS). These particles are sampled by the detector array and by checking the arrival times of nearby tanks, the method reveals whether a detector suffers from a time-offset. The data analyzed in this thesis derive from CORSIKA (COsmic Ray SImulation for KAscade) and GEANT4 (GEometry ANd Tracking) simulations of cosmic-ray events within the energy range of 1–1:6TeV, which mainly consist of protons. The high flux of this particular type of cosmic-rays, gives us a tool to statistically evaluate the results generated by the proposed timing calibration method. In the framework of this thesis, I have written code in Python programming language in order to develop the timing calibration method. The method identifies detectors that suffer from time-offsets and improves the reconstruction accuracy of the ALTO detector array. Different Python packages were used to execute different tasks: astropy to read filter-present-write large datasets, numpy (Numerical Python) to make datasets comprehensiveto functions, scipy (Scientific Python) to develop our models, sympy (Symbolic Python) to find geometrical correlations and matplotlib (Mathematical Plotting Library) to draw figures and diagrams. The current version of the method achieves sub-nanosecond accuracy. The next stepis to make the timing calibration more intelligent in order to correct itself. This self correction includes an agile adaptation to the data acquired for long periods of time, in order to make different compromises at different time intervals.

Over the past two decades a body of evidence concerning residual biological contamination on cleaned surgical instruments has accumulated. This is substantiated by the number of yearly surgery cancellations due to visible residue on instruments in surgical packs and incidences of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (iCJD). It is therefore imperative to develop a method of protein detection for use in clinical sterile services departments (SSDs) for monitoring of decontamination quality. This Thesis describes the development and use of an epifluorescence surface scanner (EFScan) technology in the assessment of proteinaceous residue on surgical instruments, by detecting protein pre-labelled with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC), and exploratory studies on the feasibility of label-free detection, using intrinsic protein fluorescence. Measurements using FITC labelling showed that residual protein on the order of micrograms can be found on new, single-use instruments (i.e. prior to use). This is comparable to the amount of residual protein found on retired, reusable instruments. To confirm the suitability of fluorescence techniques in the detection and quantification of proteinaceous residue, a blind, pilot study was carried out in conjunction with groups from Queen Mary University and the University of Southampton. Each University used a different labelling and detection method, and results showed good agreement between these methods. This showed that fluorescence is a suitable technique for the detection and quantification of proteinaceous contamination on surgical instruments. The next step in the project focussed on detection of contamination via intrinsic protein fluorescence from tryptophan residues, with a view to elimination of the labelling step. Intrinsic fluorescence of proteins in solution is widely characterised; however, fluorescence characteristics of solid or surface-bound protein have been little studied. Therefore, the characterisation of solid protein fluorescence and the emission characteristics of protein adsorbed onto stainless steel was undertaken. Analysis of the commonly used protein standard bovine serum albumin (BSA) showed that the two tryptophan residues it contains are highly susceptible to photo-oxidation in the solid state, resulting in conversion to the fluorescent photoproducts n-formylkynurenine (NFK) and kynurenine. Therefore, BSA is not suitable for use as a standard in the development of intrinsic fluorescence detection of surface-bound protein. The 72-tryptophan protein fibrinogen, as well as a series of other multi-tryptophan proteins, were assessed and it was found that photo-oxidation of the tryptophan residues did not occur on the irradiation timescale of 1 hour utilized. Therefore, it was concluded that lysozyme or gamma-globulins, a prominent group of serum proteins, would be more suitable candidates as a standard in subsequent research into the intrinsic detection and quantification of proteinaceous contamination. A third study explored the potential use of fluorescence in the early diagnosis of cataract. This involved the fluorescence characterisation of healthy porcine lenses and the use of UV irradiation of the lens to attempt to create cataract in vitro. There was found to be a large variation in fluorescence characteristics from lens to lens, suggesting that fluorophore concentrations can vary significantly. This implies that identification of a suitable standard for the early detection of cataract may be problematic. Attempts to create cataract resulted in the photo-oxidation pathway which had been observed in BSA, and although NFK and kynurenine play a role in cataractogenesis, the accumulation of these photoproducts is not analogous to a natural cataract. It was found that these products could be destroyed by irradiation of the lens at appropriate photo-bleaching wavelengths. However, this also destroyed intrinsic, protective fluorophores within the lens, suggesting that a light-based method of cataract treatment may not be achievable.

Cette thèse explore les conséquences du fait que les sources de rayons cosmiques sont distribuées de façon non homogène dans notre Galaxie. Elle débute par plusieurs synthèses théoriques et expérimentales. Dans un premier temps la présentation du milieu interstellaire permet de comprendre les mécanismes en jeu dans la propagation et l'accélération des rayons cosmiques. Puis l'étude du mécanisme détaillé de la diffusion des rayons cosmiques sur le champ magnétique conduit à l'équation de propagation utilisée communément. Les solutions stationnaires de cette équation seront rappelées, puis la thèse s'articule autour de l'étude des solutions non stationnaires dans le cadre de sources ponctuelles dépendantes du temps. Une étude statistique permet d'évaluer la dispersion du flux de rayons cosmiques autour de sa valeur moyenne. Le calcul de cette dispersion conduite à des divergences mathématiques et des outils statistiques sont développés pour contourner ce problème. Ainsi l'effet de la granularité des sources est discuté et l'impact sur le spectre du rayonnement cosmique permet d'expliquer les récentes mesures de flux de protons et d'héliums de expériences CREAM et PAMELA.D'autre part la thèse porte sur l'étude de l'anisotropie du rayonnement cosmique. Les méthodes de mesures expérimentales seront rappelées, et une partie du manuscrit est consacrée à relier les calculs théoriques, menés dans le cadre des modèles de propagation, aux expériences. S'en suit d'une part le calcul de l'effet de l'environnement local sur la mesure d'anisotropie, comme l'influence d'un coefficient de diffusion local. Puis, l'anisotropie et sa variance sont calculées dans le cadre de sources ponctuelles avec l'aide des outils développés dans la première partie. Enfin, la possible influence des sources locales sur l'anisotropie est discutée à la lumière des derniers résultats expérimentaux. / In this thesis I study the consequence of non homogeneously distributed cosmic ray sources in the Milky way. The document starts with theoretical and experimental synthesis. Firstly, I will describe the interstellar medium to understand the mechanism of propagation and acceleration of cosmic rays. Then, the detailed study of cosmic rays diffusion on the galactic magnetic field allows to write a commonly used propagation equation. I will recall the Steady-state solutions of this equation, then I will focus on the time dependant solutions with point-like sources. A statistical study is performed in order to estimate the standard deviation of the flux around its mean value. The computation of this standard deviation leads to mathematical divergences. Thus, I will develop statistical tools to bypass this issue. So i will discuss the effect of the granularity of cosmic ray sources. Its impact on cosmic ray spectrum can explain some recent features observed by the experiments CREAM and PAMELA.Besides, this thesis is focused on the study of the anisotropy of cosmic rays. I will recap experimental methods of measurements, and I will show how to connect theoretical calculation from propagation theories to experimental measurements. Then, the influence of the local environment on the anisotropy measurements will be discussed, particularly the effect of a local diffusion coefficient. Then, I will compute anisotropy and its variance in a framework of point-like local sources with the tools developed in the first part. Finally, the possible influence of local sources on the anisotropy is discussed in the light of the last experimental results.

This project will be a part of the LODESTAR experiment. LODESTAR is one of the experiments scheduled to fly on the REXUS/BEXUS 26 high altitude balloon flight. The primary objective of the experiment is to investigate the effects of cosmic radiation on CIGS solar cells. The objective of this project is to build a mechanical design that can fulfill all requirements set by the ESA user manual. The mechanical design will first be drawn in mechanical CAD, where the drawing will be constructed from the ESA requirements. Later the design will be simulated in order to choose appropriate materials and a design that can withstand all simulations. Lastly the design will be built according to the drawings and tested according to the simulations. The mechanical design withstood all the simulations and verification tests with no visual deformation, except for the simulation and verification of the drop test. Both the drop simulation and verification test resulted in deformation in one of the aluminium plates. Since this mechanical design is constructed to be used only once, small deformations is within the margin of error. The deformation resulted by the simulation and verification of the drop test matched with a high precision. This is a good confirmation of the results of the drop test. In conclusion, the executed tests gave very promising results. Therefor the design constructed fits all the requirements to travel with solar panels in stratospheric conditions. / LODESTAR -BEXUS Project

Neste trabalho estudamos alguns aspectos de geometria e topologia de variedades com o objetivo de aplicar tais resultados juntamente com dados observacionais para tentar determinar as variedades tridimensionais que possam servir de modelo para a parte espacial do universo. / In this work we study some aspects of geometry and topology of manifolds with the goal of applying such results with observational data to try to determine the tridimensional manifold that can serve as a model for the spatial part of the universe.

A small fraction of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons scatter off electrons in the ionised gas in collapsed structures. This process, known as the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, is usually broken down into a thermal (tSZ) and a kinematic (kSZ) contribution. While the former is sensitive to the random velocities of the electrons in the hot gas, the latter is sourced by the bulk motion of the entire object. In this thesis I measure the signature of both of these effects by cross-correlating CMB data with different tracers of the large-scale structure. I further study how these effects can be used as probes of cosmology and astrophysics. I first report a statistically significant detection of the kSZ effect. This is achieved by combining a cluster catalogue derived from the first year data of the Dark Energy Survey with CMB temperature maps from the South Pole Telescope. I perform the measurement with a differential statistic that isolates the pairwise kSZ signal, providing the first detection of the large-scale motion of clusters using redshifts derived from photometric data. By fitting the pairwise kSZ signal to a theoretical template, I measure the average central optical depth of the cluster sample. I compare the extracted signal to simulations and find good agreement with respect to the signal-to-noise, the constraint on the optical depth, and the corresponding gas fraction. I next study the potential of the kSZ effect as a probe of cosmology, again focussing on the pairwise method. The main challenge is disentangling the cosmologically interesting mean pairwise velocity from the cluster optical depth and the associated uncertainties on the baryonic physics in clusters. Using the Magneticum cosmological hydrodynamical simulations I calibrate a scaling relation between the amplitude of the tSZ signal and the optical depth. I show that this relation can be used to recover an accurate estimate of the mean pairwise velocity from the kSZ signal, and that this effect can therefore be used as a probe of cosmology. I finally derive constraints on feedback from active galactic nuclei by setting limits on their tSZ signal. By combining all-sky microwave, sub-mm, and far-infrared data from the Planck and AKARI satellites, I break the degeneracy between the tSZ signature and extragalactic dust emission. I test the measurement pipeline with a catalogue of galaxy clusters, finding the expected high-significance tSZ detection together with correlated dust emission. I then measure the tSZ signal of spectroscopically confirmed quasi-stellar objects (QSOs), but obtain only a low-significance hint of a tSZ signature. This analysis leads to a lower mean thermal energy than reported in some previous studies which were contaminated by dust emission. A comparison of these results to hydrodynamical simulations can be used as a probe of QSO host masses.

abstract: Galaxy formation is a complex process with aspects that are still very uncertain or unknown. A mechanism that has been utilized in simulations to successfully resolve several of these outstanding issues is active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback. Recent work has shown that a promising method for directly measuring this energy is by looking at small increases in the energy of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons as they pass through ionized gas, known as the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect. In this work, I present stacked CMB measurements of a large number of elliptical galaxies never before measured using this method. I split the galaxies into two redshift groups, "low-z" for z=0.5-1.0 and “high-z” for z=1.0-1.5. I make two independent sets of CMB measurements using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), respectively, and I use data from the Planck telescope to account for contamination from dust emission. With SPT I find average thermal energies of 7.6(+3.0/−2.3) × 10^60 erg for 937 low-z galaxies, and 6.0(+7.7/−6.3) × 10^60 erg for 240 high-z galaxies. With ACT I find average thermal energies of 5.6(+5.9/−5.6) × 10^60 erg for 227 low-z galaxies, and 7.0(+4.7/−4.4) × 10^60 erg for 529 high-z galaxies. I then attempt to further interpret the physical meaning of my observational results by incorporating two large-scale cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, one with (Horizon-AGN) and one without (Horizon-NoAGN) AGN feedback. I extract simulated tSZ measurements around a population of galaxies equivalent to those used in my observational work, with matching mass distributions, and compare the results. I find that the SPT measurements are consistent with Horizon-AGN, falling within 0.4σ at low-z and 0.5σ at high-z, while the ACT measurements are very different from Horizon-AGN, off by 6.9σ at low-z and 14.6σ at high-z. Additionally, the SPT measurements are loosely inconsistent with Horizon-NoAGN, off by 1.8σ at low-z but within 0.6σ at high-z, while the ACT measurements are loosely consistent with Horizon-NoAGN (at least much more so than with Horizon-AGN), falling within 0.8σ at low-z but off by 1.9σ at high-z. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Astrophysics 2017

abstract: The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has provided precise information on the evolution of the Universe and the current cosmological paradigm. The CMB has not yet provided definitive information on the origin and strength of any primordial magnetic fields or how they affect the presence of magnetic fields observed throughout the cosmos. This work outlines an alternative method to investigating and identifying the presence of cosmic magnetic fields. This method searches for Faraday Rotation (FR) and specifically uses polarized CMB photons as back-light. I find that current generation CMB experiments may be not sensitive enough to detect FR but next generation experiments should be able to make highly significant detections. Identifying FR with the CMB will provide information on the component of magnetic fields along the line of sight of observation. The 21cm emission from the hyperfine splitting of neutral Hydrogen in the early universe is predicted to provide precise information about the formation and evolution of cosmic structure, complementing the wealth of knowledge gained from the CMB. 21cm cosmology is a relatively new field, and precise measurements of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) have not yet been achieved. In this work I present 2σ upper limits on the power spectrum of 21cm fluctuations (Δ²(k)) probed at the cosmological wave number k from the Donald C. Backer Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER) 64 element deployment. I find upper limits on Δ²(k) in the range 0.3 < k < 0.6 h/Mpc to be (650 mK)², (450 mK)², (390 mK)², (250 mK)², (280mK)², (250 mK)² at redshifts z = 10.87, 9.93, 8.91, 8.37, 8.13 and 7.48 respectively Building on the power spectrum analysis, I identify a major limiting factor in detecting the 21cm power spectrum. This work is concluded by outlining a metric to evaluate the predisposition of redshifted 21cm interferometers to foreground contamination in power spectrum estimation. This will help inform the construction of future arrays and enable high fidelity imaging and cross-correlation analysis with other high redshift cosmic probes like the CMB and other upcoming all sky surveys. I find future arrays with uniform (u,v) coverage and small spectral evolution of their response in the (u,v,f) cube can minimize foreground leakage while pursuing 21cm imaging. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Physics 2018