Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jun 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006phdt.........4l&link_type=abstract
PhD Thesis, Proquest Dissertations And Theses 2006. Section 0330, Part 0606 120 pages; [Ph.D. dissertation].United States -- Ill
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Primordial Black Holes, Spectral Variation, Markarian 421, Whipple 10-M Telescope, Black Holes, Blazars
Scientific paper
The development of ground based atmospheric Cerenkov telescopes has opened up astronomy to the world of TeV photons and allowed for the study of a wide range of high energy physical processes. In this work two different examples are explored. The first is a search through 5.5 years of archival data from the Whipple 10-m telescope for TeV gamma-ray bursts on 1-s, 3-s, and 5- s timescales. The motivation for this search is that such a signal might be expected from the evaporation of primordial black holes (PBHs) in the local region of our galaxy. Based on a null result from this direct search for PBH evaporations, an upper limit of 1.08 × 10 6 pc -3 yr -1 (99% CL) on the evaporation rate is set, assuming the Standard Model of particle physics. This is more than a factor of two better than the previous limit at this energy range and includes longer time scales than have previously been explored.
The second topic covered in this work is a study of TeV observations of the blazar Markarian 421 made by the Whipple 10-m telescope during its 2003-2004 season. This work is the first to study this full data set. One result has been to confirm that the relationship between spectral shape and flux for month- scale flares is stable over the period of years. However, for data averaged over sub-month scales, this relationship fails to fit the data, indicating that a different mechanism is responsible for flares on the shorter time scales. Another interesting fact to come from this study is that, given the most recent constraints on the extra galactic background light, absorption by this photon field is insufficient to completely account for the cutoff observed in the spectrum of Markarian 421 at a few TeV. This finding provides further support for an intrinsic cause for this cutoff.
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