Determining when and where the near Mars space environment can support the magnetic pumping process
(Supervisor: Dr. Christopher Fowler)
Our Sun emits a stream of charged particles radially outward into our solar system. This flow, known as the solar wind (or more generically as a stellar wind), is usually (but not always) deflected around planets and other bodies it encounters, much like water in a stream is deflected around a rock. Space is however tenuous and so physical collisions are extremely rare; electromagnetic forces (“space plasma physics”) thus play pivotal roles in the evolution of the solar wind and its deflection about solar system bodies.
This project focuses on the planet Mars, investigating a specific process that arises as the solar wind is deflected around the planet. The process, called “magnetic pumping”, enables some fraction of the incident solar wind kinetic energy to be transferred to the atmosphere of the planet via electromagnetic forces. While a detailed case study of this process has been reported (Fowler+ 2020), the statistical characteristics of the Mars space environment, and how “amenable” they are for this process to occur more generally, have not yet been quantified. This project will tackle this topic via data analysis of 10 years of space plasma measurements made at Mars by NASAs Mars Atmosphere And Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. We request one REU student who will learn how to interact with and analyze in-situ space plasma observations (namely NASA MAVEN observations). The student will map plasma parameters critical to the magnetic pumping process at Mars to determine where and how often the background plasma conditions support the magnetic pumping process.
Global hybrid simulation of the solar wind interaction with Venus, where magnetic pumping can occur. The same process happens at Mars.
Figure 6 - Hybrid computer simulation of Venus and its interaction with the solar wind, demonstrating electromagnetic wave behavior at the interface between the solar wind and ionosphere.
CHIME Outrigger (Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Bandura)
Simulations of compact object populations
(Supervisor: Dr. Duncan Lorimer)
Within the field of radio transients, many exciting developments are being made thanks
to new instruments carrying out surveys of the sky with unprecedented time and
frequency resolution. There are many opportunities to explore these surveys using
Monte Carlo techniques to simulate populations of compact objects both within the
Milky Way and on a cosmological scale. A student with an interest in these topics
would be able to choose between investigations of Galactic neutron stars, white
dwarfs, or cosmological populations of fast radio bursts. Some prior exposure to
python coding would be advantageous. The student can expect to receive a good grounding
in simulation techniques that are broadly applicable to many other areas.
Gas in the Interstellar Medium (Supervisor:
Dr. Loren Anderson
)
Because of the low excitation temperature, the 4.8GHz transition of formaldehyde (H2CO) is frequently seen in absorption, even against the cosmic microwave background. Formaldehyde absorption is expected to be strongest foreground to a bright source of 4.8GHz continuum emission. Many authors have used this fact to determine the distances to the continuum sources. We have a large (400-hour) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) survey of formaldehyde in the Galactic plane (Figure 2), the first such large-scale survey. Early analysis of these data surprisingly shows the formaldehyde absorption has no discernable relationship with radio continuum sources, and therefore its use in distance determinations is suspect. An REU student will create a catalog of formaldehyde clouds, analyze their Galactic distribution, and compare this distribution to that of other tracers. The student will also investigate whether the old assumption about formaldehyde being seen in absorption toward bright continuum sources is correct, by comparing absorption found in lines of sight toward continuum sources and also nearby regions.
Figure - A portion of the data from Dr. Anderson’s GBT formaldehyde survey integrated over all velocities (background), with radio continuum emission shown as green contours. There are 10s of formaldehyde clouds in this small patch of sky that are clearly detected in absorption (dark regions), but the strength of this absorption does not appear to be correlated with the strength of radio continuum emission.
Pulsar Science with the CHIME Telescope (Supervisor: Dr. Emmanuel Fonseca)
The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope is continuously observing hundreds of radio pulsars every day. These growing data sets are becoming increasingly suitable for examining irregular behavior in timing and interstellar-medium properties that were possibly missed in past studies due to the unprecedented high-cadence nature of CHIME observations. One REU student will join the CHIME/Pulsar team for the summer of 2025 in order to learn and apply pulsar-timing techniques to CHIME data, as well as understand and participate and understand in the operation of a large radio telescope.
Pulsar Searches (Supervisor: Dr. Maura McLaughlin)
The group at WVU is involved in multiple large-scale pulsar surveys with the Green Bank and Arecibo telescopes. These searches are critical for discovering high timing precision millisecond pulsars that will increase the sensitivity of the NANOGrav pulsar timing array. Such pulsar searches also reveal exotic binaries that can be used to test general relativity and constrain the neutron star equation of state, young pulsars in supernova remnants that can tell us about supernova kick velocities, pulsars with a range of emission properties and intermittency timescales that inform the physics of pulsar emission, and can discover new FRBs. One REU student will analyze pulsar and transients data, lead follow-up observations of newly discovered pulsars, and learn how to “time” pulsars and thereby determine their periods, period derivatives, and binary parameters (if applicable). This project is expected to result in a publication with timing solutions for a number of newly discovered pulsars.
Figure - The sky covered from the start of the Green Bank Northern Celestial Cap (GBNCC) survey from 2009 until 2019. Thus far, 161 pulsars, including 20 MSPs and 11 RRATs, have been discovered in this survey. The REU students funded from this proposal would help process the data accumulated in 2019 and the first half of 2020, which we expect to result in the discovery of ~20 pulsars.