Particle Astrophysics with Milagro

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal requests funding for allowing the Maryland group to analyze data from the Milagro Detector, to partake in the operation of the detector, and to take care of certain aspects of centralized data management. Milagro's scientific goals are: Perform the first all-year monitoring of TeV emission from the known flaring sources Markarian 421 and Markarian 501. Perform the first surrey of the northern sky for steady and episodic sources. Perform the first sensitive search for emission from GRBs from -100 GeV to many TeV. Detect VHE emission from the Crab and measure its energy spectrum with a new, independent technique. Detect the shadow of the moon with high significance and use it to calibrate the energy response of the detector and to perform a search for high-energy cosmic antiprotons. Detect the shadow of the sun with high significance and use it to continuously monitor the strength of the transverse component of the solar magnetic field. Perform the most sensitive search for evaporating primordial black holes. Measure ground-level proton events produced by solar coronal mass ejections in a higher energy regime and over shorter time scales than ever before possible.