CASPAR :: Codes in AStroPArticle Research :: 2014

15 Sept 2014, 08:00 → 19 Sept 2014, 18:00 Europe/Berlin

ZOQ, Building 90, Seminar Room (DESY Hamburg)

Carmelo Evoli (II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Hamburg), Guenter Sigl (University of Hamburg), Michael Grefe (DESY)

The CASPAR School in brief

The aim of the School is to give to PhD students and young Postdoctoral Researchers in the field of Astroparticle physics the opportunity of becoming familiar with a selection of software tools currently in use in their research area.
The attendance is limited to about 16 students. There is no fee. Accommodation and lunches are provided by the School. During the last day we plan to have short presentations by the students and a few topic-related discussion sessions.
Hands-on activities as well as introductory-level lectures will focus on the following topics:

Galactic Cosmic Rays

- propagate nuclei, leptons, anti-matter from standard astrophysical and dark-matter sources

Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays

- simulate UHECR spectrum, composition and anisotropy for different source and magnetic field models

Dark Matter calculations

- generate spectra from dark-matter decay or annihilation

Diffuse Emissions

- calculate gamma-ray, neutrino and synchrotron maps

Slides GSigl_CASPAR2014.pdf

Monday 15 September

08:45 Wake-up coffee

1 Cosmic Rays: an Overture

Speaker: Guenter Sigl (University of Hamburg)

2 Cosmic Ray propagation with DRAGON: some basic physics to start with

Speaker: Dario Grasso (INFN Section of Pisa, Italy)

Slides DGrasso_CASPAR2014.pdf

11:00 Coffee break

3 The DRAGON code: load it, run it, plot it!

Speaker: Daniele Gaggero (SISSA)

Slides DGaggero_CASPAR2014.pdf

4 Code Working Session I/IV

Tuesday 16 September

09:00 Wake-up coffee

5 An introduction to ultra-high energy cosmic rays

Speaker: Daniel Kümpel (RWTH, Aachen, Germany)

Slides DKuempel_CASPAR2014.pdf

11:00 Coffee break

6 The CRPROPA code: load it, run it, plot it!

Speaker: David Walz (RWTH, Aachen, Germany)

Slides DWalz_CASPAR2014.pdf

7 Code Working Session II/IV

Wednesday 17 September

09:00 Wake-up coffee

8 Indirect Searches for Dark Matter: Overview and recent developments

Speaker: Christoph Weniger (GRAPPA, Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Slides CWeniger_CASPAR2014.pdf

11:00 Coffee break

9 The DarkSUSY code: load it, run it, plot it!

Speaker: Francesca Calore (GRAPPA, Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Slides FCalore_CASPAR2014.pdf

10 Code Working Session III/IV

Thursday 18 September

09:00 Wake-up coffee

11 An introduction to gamma-ray astrophysics

Speaker: Andi Hektor (NICPB, Tallinn, Estonia)

Slides AHektor_CASPAR2014.pdf

11:00 Coffee break

12 Modeling the high-energy sky

Speaker: Carmelo Evoli (II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Hamburg)

13 Code Working Session IV/IV

Friday 19 September

09:00 Wake-up coffee

Student Talks

14 dSphs, J-factors and DM limits

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) are dominated dark matter (DM) astrophysical objects which allow us to put tight constraints on the velocity averaged annihilation cross-section of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Such bounds, coming from the observation of dSphs in the gamma-ray band, depend crucially on the mass modelling of this peculiar class of galaxies. We will review the moment-based Jeans analysis to get quantitative informations about the mass halo of dSphs and shed new lights on the astrophysical uncertainty present in the game, stressing the underlying assumptions involved. In particular, inverting the Jeans equation, we will show a semi-analytic approach to assess the biggest possible span of the astrophysical uncertainty in dSph mass modelling , deriving dSph halo densities and the intimately related "J-factors" as functions of the stellar orbital anisotropy profile. As a final remark of the results of our work, a weaker bound on the DM annihilation cross-section with respect to the latest one given by FERMI-LAT collaboration turns out to be highly plausible.

Speaker: Mr Mauro Valli (SISSA, INFN)

15 Anti-nuclei from Dark Matter

Light anti-nuclei, namely anti-deuteron and anti-helium, can be produced through the nuclear coalescence of the anti-protons and the anti-neutrons that are originated in a dark matter pair annihilation event. At low kinetic energies, the fluxes of these bound states are found to dominate over the astrophysical background and thus anti-nuclei may be considered as a very promising channel for a dark matter indirect detection, especially for WIMPs with a low or intermediate mass. In this talk, an overview on the principal issues related both to the anti-nuclei production and to their subsequent propagation through the interstellar medium and the heliosphere will be given. Then, the capability of current and future experiments to detect a light anti-nuclei flux produced by dark matter annihilation will be investigated in relation to the constraints on the dark matter annihilation cross section that can be derived from the latest measurements of the cosmic anti-proton flux.

Speaker: Mr Andrea Vittino (Universita' di Torino and INFN Torino)

16 On the dependence of cosmic ray propagation parameters upon some basic source properties.

An understanding of the origin of cosmic rays requires inferring source as well as propagation parameters from the analysis of the data. While it is well appreciated that propagation parameters depend on the propagation model adopted, it is also important to gauge to what extent they are affected by more or less implicit assumptions on the source properties. I present some results about such possible "theoretical biases" within the slab framework. In particular, I investigate the impact of hypotheses such as the universality of the injection spectral index and the lift of the hypothesis that "fragile nuclei" (such as Boron) are completely absent at injection.

Speaker: Mr Yoann GÉNOLINI (LAPTh)

Student Talks

17 Pulsar interpretation of the positron fraction

Speaker: Mathieu Boudaud (LAPTh)

18 Pulsar interpretation of AMS-02 lepton fluxes with DRAGON

Speaker: Jie Feng (LAPP)

19 Code Working Session - Extra time