Observation of CR Anisotropy with ARGO-YBJ

The measurement of the anisotropies of cosmic ray arrival direction provides important informations on the propagation mechanisms and on the identification of their sources. In this paper we report the observation of anisotropy regions at different angular scales. In particular, the observation of a possible anisotropy on scales between $\sim$ 10 $^{\circ}$ and $\sim$ 30 $^{\circ}$ suggests the presence of unknown features of the magnetic fields the charged cosmic rays propagate through, as well as potential contributions of nearby sources to the total flux of cosmic rays. Evidence of new weaker few-degree excesses throughout the sky region $195^{\circ}\leq$ R.A. $\leq 315^{\circ}$ is reported for the first time.Comment: Talk given at 12th TAUP Conference 2011, 5-9 September 2011, Munich, German

The Primary Cosmic Ray All Nucleon Spectrum As Seen By ARGO-YBJ

An analysis based on the Bayes theorem is applied to study the Primary Cosmic Ray spectrum with the ARGO-YBJ detector. The method is discussed in the framework of the superposition model, in order to assess the detector capability to measure the spectral index of the all-nucleon spectru

Il PLS Fisica all’Universit`a Roma Tre. Un’esperienza di orientamento formativo.

Nel corso dello sviluppo pluriennale del PLS e' maturata la consapevolezza della necessita' di un orientamento a carattere formativo, piu' profondamente connesso con la didattica curriculare. Presso il nostro dipartimento questa prospettiva, gia' avviata negli anni precedenti, e' stata particolarmente ilevante nel corso dell’ultimo biennio. Sono stati attuati i seguenti laboratori PLS che hanno visto il coinvolgimento dei docenti universitari e della scuola: Il Laboratorio Technotour; il Laboratorio interdisciplinare sulle meteoriti; il Laboratorio RTL; il Laboratorio di astrofisica osservativa. Alle attivita' indirizzate agli studenti si sono aggiunte quelle rivolte alla formazione in servizio degli insegnanti, che hanno offerto occasioni di approfondimento metodologico: i seminari sulle problematiche educative, con la partecipazione di esperti italiani e stranieri e il Master e Corso di perfezionamento IDIFO3. I materiali prodotti nel corso di tutte queste esperienze potranno essere di grande utilita' nell’ambito dei TFA per la formazione in ingresso dei docenti. Maggiori dettagli alla pagina web: http://webusers.fis.uniroma3.it/cofis

Sinergie Progetto Lauree Scientifiche-Anno Internazionale dell'Astronomia --- un modello per le future attività del Piano Lauree Scientifiche.

In occasione dell'anno internazionale dell'astronomia il nostro dipartimento ha promosso il progetto Astronomia a Scuola che ha offerto a studenti ed insegnanti opportunità di formazione scientifica interdisciplinare diffuse sul territorio. In particolare i pacchetti astronomia e scienze hanno portato nelle scuole lezioni dialogate e attività pratiche che oltre all'astronomia, cornice interdisciplinare, hanno riguardato la fisica, la chimica, le scienze geologiche e la biologia. Sono stati anche tenuti corsi di formazione/autoformazione in servizio per gli insegnanti caratterizzati dalla partecipazione attiva e dalla comunicazione tra docenti di diverse discipline scientifiche. Tutte le suddette attività hanno avuto fruttuose sinergie con il PLS Fisica facendo intravedere un modello applicabile nel prossimo Piano Lauree Scientifiche che prevede l'estensione anche alla biologia e alla geologia

ARGO - YBJ: The Scaler Mode Technique

The ARGO-YBJ detector is an Extensive Air Shower (EAS) array located in Tibet (P.R. China) at 4300 m a.s.l., performing a continuos sky observation by shower reconstruction with an energy threshold of a few hundreds of GeV. To lower this threshold to E~1GeV the detector has been designed to work in scaler mode, i.e. recording the counting rate of each module of the detector at fixed time intervals. At these energies, signals due to local (e.g. solar events) and cosmological (e.g. Gamma Ray Bursts, GRBs) phenomena are expected as a significant enhancement of the counting rate over the background. Results of the search for the GRBs in coincidence with satellite detections are presented

Gamma ray astronomy with ARGO-YBJ: First observations.

The ARGO-YBJ experiment is the first EAS detector combining a very high mountain altitude (4300 m a.s.l.) to a full coverage detection surface. These features allow ARGO-YBJ to work in the typical energy range of Cherenkov telescopes, with an energy threshold of a few hun- dreds GeV. The low threshold and the large field of view (<2 sr) make ARGO-YBJ suitable to monitor the gamma ray sky, searching for un- known sources and unexpected events, like Active Galactic Nuclei flaring episodes or high energy Gamma Ray Bursts. In this paper we present the preliminary results on Gamma Ray Astron- omy obtained with the events collected in the first months of data taking, in particular the detection of gamma rays from the Crab Nebula, the ob- servation of a Markarian 421 outburst in July-August 2006, and finally a search for Gamma Ray Bursts emission in the GeV energy range using the scaler mode technique

ARGO-YBJ: Present status and first investigations in cosmic-ray astrophysics

The ARGO-YBJ experiment has been taking data for one year with a 6000 m2 full-coverage carpet of resistive plate chambers. The status of the detector and its present performance are discussed, in connection with the first results of the experiment in cosmic-ray astrophysics

ARGO-YBJ Computing Model. Data Analysis and Hardware/ Software Architecture of the Processing Farm

The Chinese-Italian experiment ARGO-YBJ in Tibet is going to start next spring the first period of data-taking with 36 RPC clusters installed. The paper describes the computing model and the hardware resources required for data reconstruction and analysis. The present configuration of the processing farm, composed by 24 biprocessors computing elements and 4 diskserves (7.5 TB total) is describeds. The software designed and developed for data organization, reconstruction job submission, data analysis and error management is briefly reported. The management software of the farm, including the GRIDWARE queuing and submission package, the DB design and the monitoring software are also described

Study of gamma-hadron discrimination for the ARGO-YBJ experiment

Very High Energy Gamma Astronomy is one of the scientific aims of the ARGO-YBJ experiment (YangBaJing, P.R. China), an extensive air shower detector made of a single layer of Resistive Plate Chambers covering a surface of about 6700 m2. The exploitation of the full coverage approach (93% of active area) together with the very high altitude locatio

Performance of the 1.5 x 10^5 front-end electronics channels of the ARGO-YBJ experiment

By using an 8-channel custom chip in GaAs technology, over 1.5*10^5 front-end electronics channels were built