Publication Date

1992

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Willis, Suzanne E.

Degree Name

M.S. (Master of Science)

Legacy Department

Department of Physics

LCSH

Cygnus X-3; Cosmic ray muons

Abstract

An attempt to point muon tracks back to Cygnus X-3 was made using the DOmuon Cosmic Ray Telescope. A data set of 11.3 million muon events was examined, representing ~ 313.5 hours of live time from September 13 - December 13, 1989. The data was filtered, which left 3,478,283 events, with 8,226 events in a 10° x 1° elliptical window centered on Cygnus X-3. There were also 4,289, 1, 717, and 452 events in similar windows with momentum cuts of 10 GeV/c, 25 GeV/c, and 100 GeV/c respectively. For each of the windows centered on Cygnus X-3, there were 35 equivalent background windows at the same declination as Cygnus X-3 spaced every 10° right ascension. An attempt to look for a DC excess of events from Cygnus X-3 was unsuccessful due to a severe time bias in the data. Phase histograms were used on the windows to look for a source periodicity. Both a cubic and parabolic fit equations were used from the van der Kliss and Bonnet-Bidaud ephemeris to calculate phase. A second time bias was found in the phase histograms, and was eliminated by subtracting an estimated background for each phase bin from each phase bin in the source window. A broad inconsistent peak of only marginal significance in these phase histograms was seen from 0.85 — 0.15 in phase for the cubic fit, and from 0.00 — 0.25 in phase in the parabolic fit. This peak could correspond to a peak in the phase histogram seen by Soudan-1 in 1983.

Comments

Includes bibliographical references (pages 134-138)

Extent

xii, 138 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

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