Editors choice on Space Weather AGU papers

COST is one of the European Union (EU) most successful instruments to promote scientific projects on the European level. There are hundreds of COST projects in numerous fields of science with thousands researchers from all the European and non-European countries (unfortunately only 2 from Armenia) making joint researches most important to the EU projects. Twice a year meetings are held for the  COST country representative to exchange results and plan new investigations, short visits, etc. Recently a new program has launched for the young Phd, postdoctoral researchers: to provide up to 3,000 euro for participation in the conferences. At Brugge meeting Cosmic Ray Division (CRD) was accepted as non-COST Institutes to join the ES0803 Action. The COST action also planned Space Weather School in Trieste in October 2010.

The traditional Space Weather week was also held in Brugge, the ancient Belgian town with old narrow streets and channels full of beautiful 3-flored old buildings and toll chapels (see CRD picture gallery for details).  The conference is focused on the creation of the commercial Space Weather forecasting services, crucial for the Space Exploration. The motto of the conference is to provide right information at the right time to the right people to make right decisions! Moving from physics to monitoring and forecasting.

Thomas J.Bogdan, director of the NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center presented the joint NOAA-Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) Space Weather Prediction Testbed project, a numerical heliospheric solar storm propagation model (the Geospace Response Model - GRM), that will dramatically enhance the lead time for the prediction of the onset of geomagnetic storms from the current 20 to 50 minutes, provided by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer spacecraft, out to one to four days.

The GRM consists of the following parts:

1. Solar Wind Disturbance;

2. Energetic Particle Transport;

3. Solar Irradiance Prediction;

4. Magnetograms simulation – likelihood of the Solar Flares;

5. Solar general Circulation Model.

Ability to respond to the space weather community expeditiously and build a strong trust relationship within the community is planned by 2012. Transition from models design, verification and validation to commercial operation is planned in 2010-2018.

The director of the ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Project, J.P.Luntama, informed that the overall objective of the project is to provide timely and quality data, information, services and knowledge regarding the environment, the threats and the sustainable exploitation of the outer space surrounding the planet Earth. SSA serves the implementation of the strategic missions of the European Space Policy based on the peaceful uses of the outer space by all states, by supporting the autonomous capacity to securely and safely operate the critical European space infrastructures. The SSA preparatory program started in 2009 and will continue until 2011. The aim of the preparatory program includes a number of precursor services in the areas of Space Surveillance, Space Weather and Near Earth Objects (NEOs). The Space Weather (SWE) segment of the SSA will provide user services related to the monitoring of the Sun, the solar wind, the radiation belts, the magnetosphere and the ionosphere. These services will include near real time information and predictions about the characteristics of the space environment and space weather impacts on man- made systems, and a permanent database for analysis, model development and scientific research. These services are aimed at supporting for example spacecraft designers, spacecraft operators, human space flights, users and operators of transionospheric radio links, other SSA segments, and the space weather research community. The precursor SWE services will include a selected subset of these services based on pre-existing space weather applications. Spanish, French and German Space Weather programs were also presented. At the poster session numerous facilities and methods were presented and discussed. I presented the concept and the first results of the SEVAN world-wide network of hybrid particle detectors, measuring 3 species of the secondary cosmic rays. The considerable advantage of SEVAN type detectors upon the 60 years old neutron monitors is as follows:

Significantly enlarge the reliability of Space Weather alerts due to detection of 3 particle fluxes instead of only one in existing neutron monitor and muon telescope world-wide networks.

Detection of electrons and gamma-quanta from showers  generated by powerful natural accelerators operating during thunderstorms – research of Detection of operation of the relativistic feedback accelerator in low atmosphere.

During the conference we also performed several meetings with Rainer Hippler, Lev Dorman and Lev Pustil’nik to form a consortium for the new FP7 programme on the Space Weather forecasting based on SEVAN network.

At DESY I conducted several meetings with DESY directorate members, met HERMES, H1 groups, examined the ARGUS detector dismounted by the YerPhI technicians and gave a seminar on the recent cosmic ray research.

During the meetings with new DESY research director Joachim Mnich and deputy research detector Manfred Fleischer  the ongoing joint projects were discussed and a firm intention to continue and enlarge the collaboration between YerPhI and DESY was confirmed. YerPhI  got invitation to actively participate in the last high energy physics experiment at DORIS rings - the OLYMPYS* experiment. The funds from EU and USA are already  allocated, the preparatory works already started (by YerPhI group), MOU planned to be signed in the end of 2009 and experiment is planned at 2012. By that time a lot of preparatory simulations should be done to be sure that all parameters of experiment are chosen optimally. 2012 is the last year of DORIS operation, therefore, there will be no time to reuse the beam and correct possible mistakes.  A decision was made to donate YerPhI large computer cluster for the GRID operation. The transportation of computers was planned for the Spring, 2010.

Figure 2 The ARGUS magnet to be dismounted by Armenian group

During the meeting with the former chair of DESY Directors board Albrecht Wagner we discussed the situation in YerPhI after external board meeting in July 2009. Albrecht Wagner, one of the most active commission members, once again emphasized the necessity to urgently form a Permanent External Board for YerPhI. He claimed that without this board he will not be able to run DESY.During the visit to the HERA west hall the exhibition of the HERA experiments detectors and the new workshop for particle detector assembling were demonstrated to me. During recent “open doors” at DESY more than 13,000 Hamburg citizens visited specially prepared expositions at DESY. It is a good example for YerPhI: we have to prepare the exhibition of our facilities, invite students from all the Armenian universities and schools to interest the new generation in high energy physics. In contrast with YerPhI the age structure of DESY is balanced and they have no problems to incorporate students in current activities.

Figure 3.  N.Akopov at HERA detectors exhibition

Figure 4.  New detector assembling workshop, placed in the hall cleaned in 2008 by YerPhI technicians

 * Striking differences have been observed in the ratio between the electric and magnetic proton form factors as function of Q2, either from measurements using the Rosenbluth separation method or using polarisation transfer. Two-photon exchange (TPE) effects are one possible explanation for this discrepancy. The most elegant and direct way to measure the TPE is to measure the ratio of elastic electron-proton and positron-proton cross-sections, where the contribution enters with different sign.Such an experiment, now named OLYMPUS, has been proposed to be performed at the DORIS storage ring at DESY utilizing the BLAST detector. The details of experiment and YerPhI participation in it will be presented by N.Akopov  in Spring 2009.

1. On November 4 I was among the delegation accompanying the PM of Armenia Tigran Sargsyan in his visits to  Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and Berkley University.  At SLAC Mr. Sargsyan met with Director of SLAC – Dr. Persis Drell, Associate Lab Director -  Dr. Dale Knutson, Director of Accelerator Research department Dr. Tor Raubenheimer, and Armenian students of the Stanford university. PM was introduced to the history of SLAC, ongoing research and development of new accelerators for powerful light sources and for medicine. Also, the status of national lab (SLAC present status) was explained and discussed. During the meetings with the Armenian students and the representative of the Silicon valley Armenian diaspora in Berkeley, PM talked over the RA politics to support the education of Armenian students  in the country and abroad in world-best universities. The new organized National Competitiveness council and Luis foundation will coordinate projects in tourism, education and healthcare. The Yerevan Physics institute, to be turned to National lab, will actively participate in nuclear medicine establishing in Armenia.

2. On November 6 and 7 I participated in the plenary and section sessions of the ArmTech congress. Plenary sections were very interesting; the presidents and CEO of big companies based in the Silicon Valley presented a  broad picture of the high tech industry development and the possibilities of Armenia to take part in it. Unfortunately, ArmTech section sessions were not much populated and business contacts were very rare. Seem, that Armenian presenters, despite very interesting projects, were not suffisiently prepared for business contacts. They did not elaborate business schemes to involve private capital (asking for loans, selling part of business, etc...) and they were not ready to share the business with  private people to recieve investments. The estimates of the expected profit and of the product price were also a bit arbitrary. In my plenary presentation “Applied Cosmic Ray Physics: Science-Technology-Innovation" I tried to demonstrate the connections between fundamental science and innovation illustrating the Space Weather research in Cosmic Ray Division of Yerevan Physics Institute. It is a new emerging scientific field, as well as a new emerging commercial service. Fundamental science in this case is directly creating a new innovative technology.  In the Space Weather research we  have performed  fundamental research, technological know-how and elaborated business schemes in one and the same project, that is very challenging. However, this has resulted from a big demand in new innovative technologies and products necessary for the overcoming of the economical crisis. The ArmTech congress has the goals to develop knowledge based economy in Armenia via business/academia cooperation invoking the intellectual capital and entrepreneurship experience from Diaspora. This goal can be achieved  through improvement of education at all levels; building strong Internet presence; focusing on programs to end up on the products or services; and by reforming and creating transparent government agencies.

Accelerator Division at SLAC:

Figure 3. The 12 GeV electron accelerator of the LCLS

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) provides the world's brightest, shortest pulses of laser X-rays for various fundamental and applied studies. It will give scientists an unprecedented tool for studying and understanding the arrangement of atoms in semiconductors, ceramics, polymers, catalysts, plastics, and biological molecules, with wide-ranging impact on advanced research in other fields.

The LCLS X-ray beam is brighter than any other human-made source of short-pulse, hard X-rays. Initial tests produced laser light with a wavelength of 1.5 Angstroms, or 0.15 nanometers—the shortest-wavelength, highest-energy X-rays ever created by any laser. To generate that light, the team had to align the electron beam with extreme precision of  5 micrometers per 5 meters.

Unlike conventional lasers, which use mirrored cavities to amplify light, the LCLS is a free-electron laser, creating light using free-flying electrons in a vacuum. The LCLS uses the final third of SLAC's two-mile linear accelerator to drive electrons to high energy and through an array of "undulator" magnets (33 Wiglers, only 12 used)  that steer the electrons rapidly back and forth, generating a brilliant beam of coherent X-rays.

5. On November 10 I held a seminar for the Stanford/KAvli particle astrophysics group on the recent discovery of powerful electron accelerator operated in lower atmosphere, named “Thunderstorm Correlated Fluxes of electrons, Gammas and Neutrons Observed at Mountain Altitude”. The same seminar was given also for the solar physics group of the Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto.

In 1942 the Alikhanyan brothers initiated the first expedition to Aragats.  Since then, expeditions to Aragats have  continued uninterruptedly, despite the World War II, insufficient funding, and electricity and fuel shortages during the recent history of Armenia.  The most important dates and achievements of Cosmic Ray research at Aragats can be itemized as follows

• 1945-1955 – Experiments at Aragats with Mass-spectrometer of Alikhanyan-Alikhanov: investigations of the composition of secondary CR (energies <100 GeV); exploration of the “third” component in CR; observation of particles with masses between µ-meson and proton;
• 1957 – Design and fabrication of the first ionization calorimeter, observation of the rise of hadron non-elastic cross section in the energy range 0.5 - 10 TeV;
• 1970 – Experiments with Wide-gap Spark Chambers; Lenin prize awarded to T.Asatiani and A.Alikhanyan;
• 1975 –Experiment MUON: measuring of the energy spectrum and charge ratio of the horizontal muon flux;
• 1977 – Experiment PION: identification of the pions and protons by TRD; measuring pion and proton energy spectra, inelasticity coefficients inelastic cross sections of hadrons in the energy range 0.5 - 10 TeV;
• 1981-1989 – Start of the ANI Experiment: commencement of the MAKET-ANI and GAMMA surface detector arrays for measuring cosmic ray spectra in the “knee” region (1014 – 1016 eV);
• In 1990 an invention was registered  by the USSR patent agency authored by Erik Mamaidjanyan and Khachik Babayan with colleagues from Moscow State University on the behavior of pion multiple production. Invention consists in the observation that in interactions of high energy pion with light nuclei in 10% of cases few neutral pions  (1-3) took more than half of energy of primary particle;
• 1993-1996 – Development of new methodology of multivariate, correlation analysis for signal detection from  γ-ray point sources event-by-event analysis of shower data from KASCADE experiment; classification of primary nucleus;
• 1996-1997 – Renewal of Cosmic ray variation studies at Aragats: installation of the Solar Neutron Telescope and resumption of Nor Amberd Neutron Monitor;
• 2000 – Foundation of Aragats Space Environmental Center (ASEC) – for Solar Physics and Space Weather research; measurements of the various secondary fluxes of cosmic rays; inclusion of the large surface arrays in monitoring of the changing fluxes of secondary cosmic rays;
• 2003 – Simultaneous detection of the intensive solar modulation effects in October – November in the low energy charged particle, neutron and high energy muon fluxes;
• 2004 – Measurement of the spectra of heavy and light components of GCR, observation of very sharp “knee” in light nuclei spectra and absence of “knee” in heavy” nuclei spectra;
• 2005  - Measurements of highest energy protons in Solar Cosmic Rays (GLE  69 on  January 20; detection of Solar protons with E>20GeV);
• 2007 - Start of SEVAN (Space Environmental Viewing and Analysis Network  - a new type of world-wide network of particle detectors for monitoring of geophysical parameters;
• 2007 – By GAMMA experiment, the energy spectra of primary H, He, O-like and Fe-like nuclei are derived in the 103–105 TeV; the all-particle primary cosmic-ray energy spectrum in the 3x10³-2x10⁵ TeV energy ranges;
• 2008 – Cosmic Ray modulation research; Multivariate analysis and classification of the solar transient events (Ground level enhancements, Geomagnetic effects, Forbush decreases) detected by ASEC monitors during 23rd solar activity cycle.

Now the Cosmic Ray Division of Yerevan Physics Institute includes approximately 80 people, who work at the Aragats and Nor-Amberd high altitude stations and at the headquarters in Yerevan where most of the data analysis and computation takes place. Many of the staff members are young graduate students or recent postgraduates.  Scientific researchers on Mt Aragats are constantly searching for new methods and new frontiers as the Armenian physicists do their best in the quest of solving the mysteries of the Universe.

During the last 5 years CRD physicists have published 76 papers in referred journals (part of them in collaboration with KASCADE and MAGIC groups) and presented 104 reports at the international conferences. More detailed information on papers and reports is posted in the CRD WEB pages, http://aragats.am/CRD_Journal_Publications_2002_2008 and http://aragats.am/Conferences/?id=39&other= .

CRD funding comprises from international scientific foundations; funding of Republic of Armenia and support from US diasporas (NFSAT project). The annual budget rose thrice during the last 10 years and in 2008 approached to 600$. Broad scientific collaborations, winning of international grants and current achievements of the CRD scientists give  hope that this rise will continue during the coming years.

CRD  now is a world leader in the surface monitoring of the secondary cosmic rays. Numerous particle detectors measuring charged and neutral fluxes are operating on 3 levels (1000, 2200 and 3200 above sea level) and provide scientific community with unique data. Measuring as many as possible secondary fluxes with various energy thresholds CRD physicists access wide spectrum of primary energies incident on the Earth’s atmosphere and can research the solar modulation effects with unprecedented accuracy. Among scientific topics to be addressed in coming years, coinciding with the rise of solar activity of the 24th cycle are:

1. Detection of the highest energy solar cosmic rays; research of the acceleration mechanisms and propagation in the interplanetary space;
2. Measurements of the geomagnetic effects; research of the interaction of Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections with magnetosphere;
3. Multiple correlation analysis of the flare, CME, geo-parameters; identification and explanation of the nontrivial correlations; forming of the model of violent solar event in progress;
4. Establishing of reliable and timely forewarning services of space storms;
5. Research of atmospheric electricity and mechanisms of the thunderstorms.

The goals detailed above will be fulfilled by 24 hour year-round operation of the ASEC monitors, through active participation in the international measuring networks and the enlargement of SEVAN network to new countries, through establishment of magnetometric center on Aragats and  by designing and assembling new particle detectors with advanced possibilities to measure neutron flux and by designing and implementing multivariate data analysis methods.

New detectors and new experimental labs for secondary flux monitoring will be established in the campus of Yerevan Physics Institute in Yerevan to measure and compare changing particle fluxes on 3 altitudes.

The research of the Galactic Cosmic Rays after the “knee” will be continued with GAMMA detector to research fine structure of spectra and to distinguish the showers initiated by primary gammas (so called muon poor showers) to measure diffuse flux and search of the point sources of high energy gamma quanta.

If appropriate international funding will be available we’ll start preparations for the ANI-new experiment in the energy ranges 1016 – 1019 eV: perform detailed simulation of the shower propagation in the atmosphere and detector response. The design of detectors will be finalized, orders assigned and prototype array commissioned.

In the Low-background laboratory of YerPhI jointly with Experimental Physics Division we plan to start monitoring the flux of the high energy muons.

CRD will continue international collaboration in measuring radiation doze on the Space station and other spacecrafts using the methodology of controlled emulsion developed in Yerevan Physics Institute.

We plan  to repair offices and teaching labs in 2009; purchase detectors, measuring devices, networking and computer equipments.

The Space Education center will operate for the Yerevan State University undergraduate students; in 2009 we plan  the Summer school at Aragats with ~10 participants and an international conference in Nor Amberd with ~40 participants.

In 2009 we plan to continue education of 2 PhD students, 3 master students and 3 undergraduate students.