This thesis deals with the idea of using accelerator driven systems for thorium transmutation into the fissile material, which can be utilized in the accelerator driven systems and in thermal nuclear reactors. Thorium occurs on Earth only in fertile isotope Th-232. It can be converted to fissile U-233 by neutron capture and subsequent beta decay. The experimental part handles the data measured by the irradiation of four thorium samples by the secondary neutrons in the QUINTA spallation target, which was irradiated with 660~MeV protons. Reaction rates for the fission and spallation products were estimated using gamma spectroscopy and activation techniques. Furthermore, Pa-233 production rates were also determined in all experimental samples. Pa-233 and fission production rates were calculated in all experimental samples using the MCNPX transport code and evaluated nuclear data for high-energy reactions. The experimental results are of a great importance for the future investigation of thorium in the accelerator driven system concept, validation of Monte-Carlo based calculation codes and validation of high-energy nuclear models.

The Master Thesis deals with the use of thorium nuclear fuel in accelerator driven systems. Basic principle of ADS, present situation and future possibilities are described in this work. The main goal of the work is determination of neutron flux in spallation target QUINTA. In December 2013, an experiment was performed at Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna. Samples of cobalt, situated at different positions in QUINTA target, were irradiated in secondary neutron field generated by deuteron beam of energies 2 AGeV and 4 AGeV and beam of C-12 with energy 2 AGeV. The samples were measured with the use of germanium semiconductor detectors and analysed using gamma-ray spectrometry. Reaction rates of Co-59 products were determined. Neutron flux was determined in setup QUINTA on the base of experimental reaction rates. Experimental reaction rates were compared with calcula1tion of MCNPX code.

La structure nucléaire en couches évolue en allant vers des régions de plus en plus exotiques de la carte des noyaux, et par conséquent, les nombres magiques conventionnels (8, 20, 28, 50, 82, 126) peuvent disparaître loin de la stabilité, tandis que de nouveaux nombres magiques peuvent apparaître. Le noyau de ⁷⁸Ni, avec 28 protons et 50 neutrons, est un des noyaux supposés doublement magiques les plus exotiques et est donc d'un grand intérêt. L'évolution de la fermeture de couche à Z = 28 en allant vers N = 50 peut être étudiée en sondant le caractère de particule individuelle des niveaux dans la chaîne isotopique de cuivre, ayant un proton de plus que le nickel. Ce travail porte sur le ⁷⁹Cu, à N = 50. Afin d'effectuer la première spectroscopie gamma en ligne des noyaux autour du ⁷⁸Ni, une expérience a été réalisée à la Radioactive Ion Beam Factory du RIKEN, au Japon. Le noyau de ⁷⁹Cu était produit par la réaction de knockout (p,2p) à partir d'un faisceau de ⁸⁰Zn envoyé sur le dispositif MINOS, une cible d'hydrogène liquide couplée à une TPC servant à reconstruire la trajectoire des protons. L'émission de rayons gamma subséquente était détectée en vol par le scintillateur segmenté DALI2. Les spectromètres BigRIPS et ZeroDegree permettaient, respectivement, une identification sans ambiguïté des noyaux entrants et sortants.Une procédure d'analyse basée sur des coïncidences gamma-gamma a permis de construire le premier schéma de niveau du ⁷⁹Cu, avec des états jusqu'à 4.6 MeV, et les résultats ont été comparés à des calculs de modèle en couches Monte Carlo. Les conclusions montrent que le noyau de ⁷⁹Cu est bien décrit en termes d'un proton de valence en dehors d'un cœur fermé de ⁷⁸Ni, ce qui implique le caractère magique de ce dernier. / The nuclear shell structure is evolving when going into more and more exotic regions of the chart of isotopes and consequently, the conventional magic numbers (8, 20, 28, 50, 82, 126) may disappear far from stability, while some new magic numbers can appear. The ⁷⁸Ni nucleus, with its 28 protons and 50 neutrons, is one of the most exotic supposedly doubly-magic nuclei, making it of great interest. The evolution of the Z = 28 gap towards N = 50 can be studied by probing the single-particle character of the states in the copper isotopic chain, having one proton more than nickel. This work focuses on Cu, at N = 50.In the aim of performing the first in-beam gamma-ray spectroscopy of nuclei in the close vicinity of ⁷⁸Ni, an experiment was carried out at the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory of RIKEN, in Japan. The ⁷⁹Cu nucleus was produced through the (p,2p) knockout reaction from a ⁸⁰Zn beam sent on the MINOS device, a liquid-hydrogen target coupled to a TPC used for proton tracking. The subsequent gamma-decay was detected in-beam with the DALI2 scintillator array. The BigRIPS and ZeroDegree spectrometers allowed an unambiguous identification of the incoming and outgoing nuclei, respectively.An analysis procedure based on gamma-gamma coincidences permitted to build the first level scheme of ⁷⁹Cu, with levels up to 4.6 MeV, and the results were compared to Monte-Carlo shell-model calculations for interpretation. The conclusions show that the ⁷⁹Cu nucleus is well described in terms of a valence proton outside a closed ⁷⁸Ni core, implying the magic character of the latter.

In this thesis, we present our two studies focused on the detection of cosmic γ-rays and the analysis of data from γ-ray observations. One study deals with the method of the Cherenkov transparency coefficient. This method is suitable for the detector calibration in experiments employing imaging atmo- spheric Cherenkov telescopes for the indirect detection of cosmic γ-rays. Us- ing rates of recorded air showers initiated by charged cosmic rays, the method aims at the monitoring of the atmospheric transparency to Cherenkov light and the calibration of the responses of Cherenkov telescopes. We present an extension of this method for the purposes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array observatory and demonstrate its feasibility using Monte Carlo simu- lations. Our other analysis utilizes more than 7 years of data from direct γ-ray observations by the Fermi Large Area Telescope. We describe in detail signal observed from the parts of the sky around the active galactic nuclei 1ES 0229+200 and Centaurus A. We report on the findings of new astro- physical sources of high energy photons and document spectral and temporal properties of their γ-ray fluxes. 1

No description available.

This dissertation develops new approaches for detection and classification of buried radioactive materials. Different spectral transformation methods are proposed to effectively suppress noise and to better distinguish signal features in the transformed space. The contributions of this dissertation are detailed as follows. 1) Propose an unsupervised method for buried radioactive material detection. In the experiments, the original Reed-Xiaoli (RX) algorithm performs similarly as the gross count (GC) method; however, the constrained energy minimization (CEM) method performs better if using feature vectors selected from the RX output. Thus, an unsupervised method is developed by combining the RX and CEM methods, which can efficiently suppress the background noise when applied to the dimensionality-reduced data from principle component analysis (PCA). 2) Propose an approach for buried target detection and classification, which applies spectral transformation followed by noisejusted PCA (NAPCA). To meet the requirement of practical survey mapping, we focus on the circumstance when sensor dwell time is very short. The results show that spectral transformation can alleviate the effects from spectral noisy variation and background clutters, while NAPCA, a better choice than PCA, can extract key features for the following detection and classification. 3) Propose a particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based system to automatically determine the optimal partition for spectral transformation. Two PSOs are incorporated in the system with the outer one being responsible for selecting the optimal number of bins and the inner one for optimal bin-widths. The experimental results demonstrate that using variable bin-widths is better than a fixed bin-width, and PSO can provide better results than the traditional Powell’s method. 4) Develop parallel implementation schemes for the PSO-based spectral partition algorithm. Both cluster and graphics processing units (GPU) implementation are designed. The computational burden of serial version has been greatly reduced. The experimental results also show that GPU algorithm has similar speedup as cluster-based algorithm.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic electromagnetic events in the universe, but there are still unanswered questions about them, like the underlying radiation mechanisms that cause the different parts of their light curves. Given that Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars with circumburst rings could be the progenitor of GRBs with late flares \cite{complex}, the purpose of this thesis was to determine if the precursor and the main emission of GRBs with late time flares might originate due to different radiation mechanisms, and thereby if WR stars could be the progenitors. 271 of the longest GRBs with flux above 10 photons/cm$^2$/s were studied and all GRBs with a precursor and a defined quiescent period were chosen for further studies. The chosen 39 GRBs were divided into different categories depending on the appearance of their light curves. A gold sample with $R_{P, max}/R_{D, max} < 0.4$ and $T_Q/T_{tot} > 0.5$, for the maximum count rate of the precursor $R_{P, max}$, the dominant emission $R_{D, max}$, and for the normalised quiescent period $T_Q/T_{tot}$ was concluded to have similar characteristics and to fit what would be expected if WR stars would be the progenitors. This group of GRBs all have a short and less bright precursor, a long quiescent period and a main emission which is brighter and longer than the precursor. The distributions of the photon index $\alpha$ for the precursor and the dominant emission for the gold sample indicate that the precursor is due to photospheric emission and the dominant emission is due to synchrotron emission. This is consistent with the interpretation that the precursor is a result of the jet interacting with the photosphere and the dominant emission is a result of interactions with the circumburst ring of a star like the WR stars. The next step in this investigation would be to study GRBs with more than one precursor that otherwise fit the description of the gold sample, to determine if these fit into the gold sample as well. / Gammablixtrar (GRB) är de mest kraftfulla elektromagnetiska eventen i universum men det finns fortfarande obesvarade frågor om dem, som de underliggande strålningsmekanismerna som orsakar de olika delarna av deras ljuskurvor. För en del av alla GRBs tar det upp till eller mer än 100 sekunder från utlösningstiden till det att en topp ses i ljuskurvan. För dessa finns då ofta en liten svag topp, som följs av en lång lugn period och sedan den dominant, starkare utstrålningen. GRBs tros kunna härstamma från Wolf-Rayet-stjärnor (WR-stjärnor), som är massiva, döende stjärnor som kan vara omringade av bubblor, nebulosor, och ringar. Om GRBs härstammar från dessa förväntas den första mindre toppen och den andra större toppen uppkomma på grund av olika strålningsprocesser. Syftet med detta projekt var därför att undersöka huruvida dessa toppar uppkommer på grund av olika processer eller ej. Sammanfattningsvis så hittades en distinkt och homogen grupp av GRBs med likande egenskaper. Resultaten påvisar att den första svaga toppen är fotosfärisk strålning, så att den uppkommer på grund av att jetstrålen från GRBn interagerar med fotosfären. Därtill tyder resultaten på att den dominanta starkare toppen är synkrotronstrålning, som kan uppkomma när jetstrålen interagerar med en ring runt en WR-stjärna. Nästa steg i detta projekt skulle vara att studera GRBs med fler än en mindre topp innan den dominant utstrålningen, för att se om dessa också har liknande egenskaper som de som hittades i den homogena gruppen.

Besides being sources of gravitational waves, there has been evidence that neutron starmergers release neutron-rich material suitable for the production of heavy r-process nuclei.The radioactive decay of these freshly synthesised elements powers a rapidly evolvingthermal transient, the “macronova” (also known as “kilonova”). Its spectral propertiesstrongly depend on the ejecta composition, since neutron rich material synthesises heavyr-process elements that can efficiently trap radiation inside the ejecta producing a longlasting signal peaking in the red part of the spectrum. The first detection of a binaryneutron star merger was also accompanied by the evidence of a relativistic jet. Despitebeing ascertained the presence of these two dynamical components, neutron-rich ejectaand ultra-relativistic jet, the observational consequences of the interplay between the twois still unclear. In the paper we investigate such interaction through dedicated specialrelativistic hydrodynamic simulations, starting from a realistic environment obtained byprevious works. Light curves are then constructed up to the time scale of days by postprocessing the hydrodynamic results adopting proper radiative transfer. I show thatjet propagation within such environment can significantly affect the observation of theradioactive transient. A relativistic outflow can in fact “punch-away” a fraction of highopacity material before the brightening of the macronova, resulting in the transient beingbrighter and bluer for on-axis observers in the first few days. In this way the jet impactsboth time scale and luminosity of the macronova peak, that are the two main observablesallowing the estimate of the ejecta properties.

No description available.

The decay of 33 hour ¹⁴³Ce to levels in ¹⁴³Pr has been studied, using Ge(Li), NaI(Tl), and Si detectors. A number of new gamma ray transitions have been discovered. A decay scheme based on the experimental results is discussed and some spin assignments are suggested. This investigation was not exhaustive and suggestions are made as to further experiments which could be done. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)