Frau Lu Lu

Physik

Team

www.ast.leeds.ac.uk/~phyll

Biografie

Brief biographical details

First class (honours) Bachelor of Science from University of Central Lancashire (UK).

On-going PhD in Astroparticle physics from University of Leeds (UK).

Long-term research visitor following the Erasmus programme in the University of Wuppertal.

Title and abstract of thesis project

Title of thesis:

Searching for ultra high energy photons using data from the Pierre Auger Observatory

Abstract:

Cosmic rays are charged particles from our galaxy and the wider universe with a vast range of energies. The highest energy cosmic ray observed so far is ~100 million million million times the energy of photons emitted from a light bulb and still ~10 million times the energy of particles accelerated in the Large Hadron Collider LHC. To understand how nature created such extreme energy particles, experiments carried out by balloons, satellites and ground based detectors have been built in the past. The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina is the biggest such experiment ever, and it is set for the highest energy cosmic rays. It covers an area of 3000 km², about 30 times of the area of Paris, to record as many of these mystery particles as possible, and to unravel their origin and the mechanisms by which they get to these gigantic energies. Through my PhD, I am trying to find photons with ultra high energies using data from the Pierre Auger Observatory. No such observations have been claimed so far although the existence of these photons has been predicted from various theories such as the super heavy dark matter model.

Neuigkeiten

Papers already presented

In progress

Publications

• Pierre Auger Collaboration, Interpretation of the Depths of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers Measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory, JCAP 02-026 (2013).

• Pierre Auger Collaboration, Constraints on the Origin of Cosmic Rays above 10¹⁸ eV from Large-scale Anisotropy Searches in Data of the Pierre Auger Observatory, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol 762, Issue 1, article id. L13, 8 pp. (2013).

• Pierre Auger Collaboration, A Search for Point Sources of EeV Neutrons, The Astrophysical Journal, vol 760, Issue 2, article id. 148, 11 pp. (2012).

• Pierre Auger Collaboration, Antennas for the detection of radio emission pulses from cosmic-ray induced air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory, Journal of Instrumentation, vol 7, Issue 10, pp. P10011 (2012).

• Pierre Auger Collaboration, The rapid atmospheric monitoring system of the Pierre Auger Observatory, Journal of Instrumentation, Volume 7, Issue 09, pp. 9001 (2012).

• Pierre Auger Collaboration, Measurement of the Proton-Air Cross Section at s=57TeV with the Pierre Auger Observatory, Physical Review Letters, vol. 109, no. 6 (2012).

• Pierre Auger Collaboration, Search for signatures of magnetically-induced alignment in the arrival directions measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory, Astroparticle Physics, Phys. Rev. D 84, 122005 (2011).

• Pierre Auger Collaboration, A search for ultra-high energy neutrinos in highly inclined events at the Pierre Auger Observatory, Physical Review D, vol. 84, Issue 12, id. 122005 (2011).

• Pierre Auger Collaboration, Description of atmospheric conditions at the Pierre Auger Observatory using the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS), vol 35, Issue 9, pp 591 (2012).

• Internal note : Lu Lu, Johannes Knapp, Alan Watson, Measuring signal fluctuations within the 25 ns intervals of the FADC traces - a step towards a new method to search for photons GAP 2013-007.

Other academic activities and memberships

• Experiment demonstrator in various science festivals, e.g., the royal society summer science exhibition (London, 2012), Leeds science festival (Leeds, 2012), the ‘big bang’ science festival (Manchester, 2010), STEM ambassador for the Manchester science festival (2009) etc.

• Talks and posters in several conferences, e.g. Pierre Auger analysis meeting in Lisbon (2013), Prague (2012), Institute of physics meeting for particle physics and Astroparticle physics in London (2012) and Glasgow (2011) etc.

• Finalist for the three-minute-thesis competition of postgraduate research conference of University of Leeds (2012)

• Shift for data-taking using telescopes from the Pierre Auger observatory in Argentina. (2011)

Sonstiges

BSc.