Physics Co-op Job Number: SLAC
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Employer Job Number: Scientific Programmer
Supervisor: Dr. Richard Dubois
Previous CoOp: Daniel Flath - dflath@slac.stanford.edu
Current CoOp: Thomas Lindner - tlindner@slac.stanford.edu
This position is with the GLAST experimental group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center just outside of San Francisco, California. GLAST is a gamma ray large-area space
telescope due to be launched in 2005.
GLAST will be NASA's 2nd-generation space telescope looking at the 100 MeV to 100 GeV
photon energy range. It is a joint effort between NASA and the US Dept of Energy.
It is a novel application of High Energy Physics detector technology to a
space-based telescope.
High-energy gamma rays probe the most energetic phenomena occurring in nature. The gamma-rays usually result from the interactions of high energy particles with matter, photons and magnetic fields. High-energy gamma rays are emitted from a diverse population of astrophysical sources: neutron stars and black holes in our own and neighboring galaxies; super-massive black holes in the nuclei of active galaxies; interstellar gas in the galaxy that interacts with high energy cosmic rays; the diffuse extragalactic background; supernovae that may be Galactic sites of cosmic ray acceleration; and gamma-ray bursts. The common element in all these sources is that they emit most of their power at gamma-ray energies.
GLAST has a field of view about twice as wide (greater than 2.5 steradians), and sensitivity about 30 times that of EGRET, its predecessor, at 100 MeV and even more at higher energies. Its one year limit for source detection in an all-sky survey is 5 x 10-9 photons cm-2 s-1 (at 100 MeV). It will be able to locate sources to positional accuracies of 30 arc seconds to 5 arc minutes.
The main focus of the work will be to contribute to the experiment's simulation package
and analysis tools that will be used to study the properties of GLAST. Previous CoOp
students have contributed significantly in all aspects of our projects to date. Because of
the complexity of the work, we will only consider 8 or 12 month terms. Current CoOp effort
has been directed towards analysis tools for a recent test beam run, where a prototype
telescope tower has been placed in the SLAC e/pi/p test beams.
The code is written in C++ and developed within Visual C++ using Windows NT. The code is also ported to unix for wider use. Consequently a good working knowledge
of C++ and unix is required. Familiarity with Visual C++ and NT would be an asset.
Location: Stanford, CA
Number of Positions: 1
Salary Range: To be determined
R.Dubois Last Modified: 11/14/01 17:11