Honors Theses and Capstones

Date of Award

Fall 2016

Project Type

Senior Honors Thesis

College or School

CEPS

Department

Physics

Program or Major

Physics

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

First Advisor

Harald Kucharek

Second Advisor

Lynn Kistler

Abstract

The Earth magnetosphere is the volume of space formed by the Earth magnetic field in response to the flow of plasma from the solar wind. Although the magnetopause shields us from the solar wind there are far more particles that penetrate with energy, and momentum to the Earths magnetosphere and interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field to create various plasmas and currents which shape and couple different regions of magnetosphere. The study of the dynamics of ions in and outside of the magnetosphere is done through mass spectrometer. Over the years, CODIF Ion TOF spectrometer have been used to understand the composition of the ions. However, the total ion detection efficiency has been decreased by a factor of 50. Thus, the scope of this project is to improve the mass resolution of the detector by understanding the scattering of the ions within the instrument. Using SRIM and SIMION simulations, we model the interaction of ions with Micro-Channel Plates (MCP) and carbon foils, which are vital components in time-of-flight detectors.

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