Date of Award
2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Space Science
Committee Chair
Peter Veres
Committee Member
Rob Preece
Committee Member
Jon Hakkila
Committee Member
Haihong Che
Committee Member
David Smith
Research Advisor
Michael Briggs
Subject(s)
Gamma ray detectors, Gamma ray bursts, Spectral theory (Mathematics)
Abstract
The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) is a wide-field survey instrument in a low-Earth, low-inclination orbit. It contains twelve sodium iodide detectors and two bismuth germanate detectors which together span an energy range from ~8 keV to ~40 MeV and observe the entire unocculted sky (~70%). The highest resolution GBM data product is the time-tagged event data which has ~2 microseconds temporal resolution and 128 pseudo-logarithmically spaced spectral channels. All of these factors make Fermi the perfect instrument for detecting a wide variety of high-energy terrestrial and astrophysical phenomena. In this dissertation, I implement new data analysis techniques to explore the edge cases of GBM data: GRB 221009A in the extremely high count-rate regime and weak terrestrial gamma-ray flashes with lightning associations in the extremely low count-rate regime.
Recommended Citation
Lesage, Stephen, "Pushing the limits of Fermi-GBM data" (2025). Dissertations. 446.
https://louis.uah.edu/uah-dissertations/446