Miguel Alejandro Mostafá

Education

M.S. Nuclear Engineering
Ph.D. High Energy Particle Physics
Instituto Balseiro, Bariloche, Argentina

Coordinates

I live in the Engineering building. Office: D209. Lab: D218.
Phone: 491-5680. Email: Miguel.Mostafa@ColoState.edu

Colorado Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP)

Homepage of the AGEP Program.
List of AGEP faculty at CSU.
Information about the AGEP Assistantship Award Program.

Research Interests

Current research in ultra high energy cosmic rays. The study of the highest energy cosmic rays is one of the multi-messenger investigations of the extreme universe. By multi-messenger I mean experiments sensitive to a variety of cosmic ray primaries, including protons, nuclei, photons, and neutrinos. By extreme I refer to the fact that cosmic rays with energies above 10¹⁹ eV likely originate in remote parts of the universe, including regions near ultra-massive black holes, GRBs, or topological defects. From the view point of high energy physics, the highest energy cosmic rays provide unique opportunities to study acceleration mechanisms to extreme particle energies as well as center of mass energies substantially higher than those at the LHC.

Research project: The Pierre Auger Observatory. This is a hybrid experiment that includes surface and fluorescence detectors of the extensive air showers produced when cosmic rays enter the atmosphere. I have focused mostly on the fluorescence detectors. As examples I actively participate in the optical calibration systems for the four fluorescence detectors, and for the main atmospheric monitoring facilities. These responsibilities are critical for the correct analysis of the fluorescence data, and are central to the issue of the GZK cutoff.

I work on the analysis of the Auger hybrid data. This extends the lower energy range of the Auger experiment (to approx. 10¹⁷ eV) and results in events with superior directional, shower energy, and compositional information. As the flux of cosmic rays rises dramatically with decreasing energy, this analysis results in a large sample of events. Results of the hybrid reconstruction I have developed contribute to many important Auger measurements. For example, point-source searches from the Galactic Center, and setting limits to photon primaries.

More info and details can be found in my research page.

Most Recent Publications

"Atmospheric effects on extensive air showers observed with the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory"
Astroparticle Physics 32 (2009), 89.

"Limit on the diffuse flux of ultrahigh energy tau neutrinos with the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory"
Physical Review D79 (2009), 102001.

"Upper limit on the cosmic-ray photon fraction at EeV energies from the Pierre Auger Observatory"
Astroparticle Physics 31 (2009), 399.

“Observation of the Suppression of the Flux of Cosmic Rays above 4x1019 eV”
Physical Review Letters 101 (2008), 061101.

“Upper Limit on the Diffuse Flux of Ultrahigh Energy Tau Neutrinos from the Pierre Auger Observatory”
Physical Review Letters 100 (2008), 211101.

“Upper Limit on the Cosmic-Ray Photon Flux Above 1019 eV Using the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory"
Astroparticle Physics 29 (2008), 243.

“Correlation of the highest-energy cosmic rays with the positions of nearby active galactic nuclei”
Astroparticle Physics 29 (2008), 188.

The full list (over 100 papers) is available upon request. (Or somewhat upon clicking here.)