NASA Postdoctoral Program Opportunities

Astrophysics: Gamma-Ray Astronomy

Opportunity ID	17734
Opportunity URL	https://npp.usra.edu/opportunities/details/?ro=17734
Location	Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD 20771
Field of Science	Astrophysics
Advisors	Theresa Brandt 301-286-4430 theresa.j.brandt@nasa.gov Regina Caputo 301-286-0072 regina.caputo@nasa.gov Elizabeth Hays 301-286-0345 Elizabeth.A.Hays@nasa.gov Stanley D. Hunter 301-286-7280 stanley.d.hunter@nasa.gov Julie McEnery 301-286-1632 Julie.E.McEnery@nasa.gov Jeremy S. Perkins 301.286.3463 jeremy.s.perkins@nasa.gov David John Thompson, Primary Advisor 301-286-8168 David.J.Thompson@nasa.gov
Citizenship Requirement	U.S. Citizens Accepted Lawful Permanent Residents Accepted Foreign Nationals Accepted - Note: At this time, GSFC does not accept NPP applications from citizens of designated countries unless they are Legal Permanent Residents of the U.S. The Designated Countries List is available at http://oiir.hq.nasa.gov/nasaecp/
Description	A continuing research program in medium- and high-energy gamma-ray astronomy focuses on increasing our knowledge of the nature and origin of Galactic and extragalactic gamma rays. The work includes instrument development, data analysis, and theoretical studies. Scientific research is in the fields of Galactic diffuse radiation, pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, solar flares, molecular clouds, normal galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and extragalactic diffuse radiation. The results will help us to understand high-energy processes in the Sun, in celestial objects, in the interstellar medium, and in extragalactic space. The efforts currently concentrate on two projects. The first is participation in the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope mission, involving an international collaboration of particle physicists and astrophysicists. We are involved with many aspects of the Fermi mission, including simulations, development of data analysis techniques, and science analysis. The second is the development of new instrumentation for gamma-ray astrophysics. This work has three thrusts: 1) the Advanced Energetic Pair Telescope (AdEPT) for gamma-ray polarimetery in the 2-200 MeV range. AdEPT is a large volume gaseous time projection chamber with high spatial resolution two-dimensional readout. It is optimized to measure gamma rays interacting via pair production at the highest achievable angular accuracy, limited by the undetectable nuclear recoil, 2) AMEGO, a combination Compton scattering and pair conversion instrument utilizing silicon strips. This instrument is similar in construction to the Fermi Large Area Telescope, but optimized for the 200 keV – 10 GeV energy range, and 3) BurstCube, a CubeSat designed to detect gamma-ray transients such as short gamma-ray bursts in the 10 keV to 1 MeV energy range using Cesium Iodide scintillators coupled to Silicon Photomultipliers.

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