Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) 5-24-2012 The nI terstellar Transport of Galactic Cosmic Rays Kelly Lave Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd Recommended Citation Lave, Kelly, "The nI terstellar Transport of Galactic Cosmic Rays" (2012). All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). 707. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/707 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of Physics Dissertation Examination Committee: Martin H. Israel, Chair W. Robert Binns James H. Buckley Ramanath Cowsik Bruce Fegley Jr. Henric Krawczynski Douglas A. Wiens The Interstellar Transport of Galactic Cosmic Rays by Kelly A. Lave A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2012 Saint Louis, Missouri c Copyright 2012 by Kelly A. Lave Abstract Using the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS) onboard the Advanced Com- position Explorer (ACE) spacecraft, new and improved high-precision measurements of the elemental composition and energy spectra of galactic cosmic rays with energies from ∼50-550 MeV/nucleon and nuclear charge 5≤Z≤28 are reported here. These results cover observations during two solar minimum periods of the solar cycle, the most recent of which exhibited very low levels of solar activity and the highest galactic cosmic-ray intensities of the space era.