A muon is going to dump a huge amount of energy into this detector. Our case study is a partnership between quarknet 4 and the griphyn 5 project. Dirt cheap muon detector puts particle physics within diy. Cosmic ray muons textbook department of physics university of. Since muons are much more deeply penetrating than xrays, muon tomography can be used to image through much thicker material than xray based tomography such as ct scanning. Feed cosmic ray, position and time data to a large network of similar systems. You must provide a pc or mac with a terminal emulator program such as hyperterm or. The teensy provides three pwm outputs that drive the hv supplies, and watches the outputs of the tubes for the voltage spikes characteristic of an electrical avalanche signifying an ionization. Fius team of quarknet teachers assembled the first cosmic ray detector in spring 08, and a second detector in summer 2009 in conjunction with 4 high school students. There are also muon detector based outreach projects, like quarknet 6, which aim at providing research experience of high school teachers. Brief history first cosmic ray detector built at purdue in about. Although some of the components of your cosmic ray detector may have come from. The muon group muon group members keith griffioen, leader yuri gershtein, deputy leader maurik holtrop stepan stepanyan sarah phillips kyle mccarty muon software group members sarah phillips, leader analysis of simulated data from each design yuri gershtein, deputy leader pimu separation optimization study maurik holtrop geometry, geometry description for input into slic. Icecube is designed to detect subatomic particles called neutrinos.
Axani took on the task of designing a prototype muon detector for use in pingu. About the workshop this is the organizing workshop for the study of physics, detectors and backgrounds at a muon collider in the 1. The desktop muon detector is a selfcontained apparatus that employs a plastic scintillator as the detection medium and a silicon photomultiplier for light collection. Brief history first cosmic ray detector built at purdue in about 2005. Tuggle ph 255001, group 4 3 may 2010 abstract we describe a procedure for detecting and timing muon decays in a scintillation detector, calculating a value for the muons mean lifetime. Quarknet cosmic ray muon detector users manual series 6000 daq january, 2010 this manual provides information for setting up and using a cosmic ray muon detector crmd with the quarknet version 2. University of rochester summer 2001 different muon counting experiments done by the quarknet teachers in the. Muons are particles that usually pass through the inner detector and calorimeter undetected. Forefront studies are progressing in the areas of sensor technology for monolithic active pixel detectors, hybrid pixel detectors, design of low mass vertex detectors and silicon trackers, high field solenoids, muon detectors and particle flow calorimetry. Make a cheap muon detector using cosmicwatch hackaday. The cosmicwatch desktop muon detector is a selfcontained, handheld cosmic ray muon detector that is valuable for astroparticle physics research applications and outreach. Kevin mcfarland, of the university of rochester, had susen clark and paul pavone test the longterm stability of scintillating crystals to be used as reference standards for cms. Thin gap chambers, resistive plate chambers, monitored drift.
The sipm pcb is used to interface the sipm to the scintillator and provides bias. Muon tomography is a technique that uses cosmic ray muons to generate threedimensional images of volumes using information contained in the coulomb scattering of the muons. Much of the work for quarknet 1999 involved the cms project at cern. These detectors can be battery powered and used in conjunction with the provided software to make interesting physics measurements. Quarknet cosmic ray muon detector users manual series. Axani originally intended to build a small, handheld muon detector as a miniature addon to icecube, a huge particle detector encased in ice, deep underground at the south pole.
Board daq board, the equip software for data gathering, and the elab interface for. Quarknet cosmic ray muon detector users manual series 6000. The quarknet cosmic ray elab contains a large data set of cosmic ray events and analysis tools. Quarknet cosmic ray detection system manual purdue physics.
A description of the measurements quarknet teachers have taken of muon flux as a function of altitude using the berkeley detector. Like above, but a hit on panel 4, and a miss on panel 3. In about an hour you should get 510 muon decay events. For anyone who wants needs the files for the cosmic ray detector, here they are in one handy zip file zip is in. The number of muons detected by the big panels rate sigma. Axani got to work and quickly devised a rough detector housed in pvc pipe. Quarknet cosmic ray muon detector user s manual series 6000 daq. Assistant professor armendarizs research is in astroparticle physics, cosmic rays, and electronic detector technology. The number of muons detected by the two small paddles 1,2,3. All design studies are guided by physics simulations.
Power supply 1 power supply with 5vdc 1a output, female connector, to provide power to the daq. Researchers have used muon detectors to discover a mysterious, 30metrelong space which could help to reveal how the 4,500yearold monument was built. Sign up the supplementary files for the desktop muon detector. This study will draw on the previous work on muon colliders but update and reevaluate the possibilities in light of the substantial recent advances. The muon spectrometer, made up of 4,000 individual muon chambers using four different technologies by 48 institutions in 23 production sites around the world, identifies and measures the momenta of muons. We have begun development of card interface software 12 using the labview. Typical muon detectors consist of photomultiplying tubes lined with a scintillatorwhen a particle such as a muon bounces through the detector, the photomultiplying tube multiplies the current produced by the emitted light.
The program also allows various highschool aged students to participate in research at the university of kansas with the high energy particle physics group. Cosmic ray detector software interface purdue university department of physics march 1, 20 1. Go full citizen scientist with mits pocketsized cosmic ray muon detector. As the name compact muon solenoid suggests, detecting muons is one of cmss most important tasks. Development started a few years ago when jeff rylander, then a fermilab trac teacher and now a quarknet lead teacher at argonne national laboratory, developed a muon lifetime experiment using a single countera scintillator mated to a photomultiplier tube pmtand an analogtodigital data acquisition daq board. A plastic scintillatorbased muon tomography system with. The number of muons detected by the small paddles that also hit panel 3 but not panel 4 1,2,4. Software does not need to remember what state the daq board is in. Because the muon is a charged particle, any detector that. Connect the pmt outputs to two detector input channels on the quarknet card. Thus, development of the desktop muon detector is a realistic exercise for students who intend to participate in particle physics and astrophysics experiments in the future.
Quarknet is an education program for us atlas and uscms, united states col. He quarknet 1 daq card for schoolnetwork cosmic ray detectors 2. Development started a few years ago when jeff rylander, then a fermilab trac teacher and now a quarknet lead teacher at argonne national laboratory, developed a muon lifetime experiment using a single countera scintillator mated to a photomultiplier tube pmtand an analogtodigital data acquisition daq board designed by sten hansen of fermilab. In addition, the collected data is used for several other calculations. The idea was to create muon detectors to add to icecube, a neutrino detector built into the ice in antarctica. Detector paddles plastic scintillator light guide p. The fermilab detector has been under continuous development for some time. A superlayer is the combination of two individual layers of bars in perpendicular directions. Each of the detectors has been in service during the 0809 and 0910 school year. Cosmicray particles reveal secret chamber in egypts. Schools with cosmic ray detectors upload data to a virtual data portal where all the data resides. Quarknetwaltacrop cosmic ray detectors users manual.
Cosmic ray detector software purdue physics purdue university. Quarknet through the quarknet program, ku scientists host area schoolteachers in workshops that help the teachers learn the best ways of presenting recent physics research to their students. Mit physicists have created a muon particle detector from offtheshelf parts. Optional rs232 to usb adapter to link to computer usb port instead of serial port 8.
App turns a smartphone into a pocketsized cosmic ray detector. Pocketsized device detects charged particles in surrounding air. These two teachers also built a muon telescope cosmicray detector for classroom. A muon, in the plane perpendicular to the lhc beams, leaves a curved trajectory in four layers of muon detectors stations. Although some of the components of your cosmic ray muon detector may. Both the hardware and software for quarknet is analyzed and compared to. The cosmic ray elab provides an online environment in which students experience the excitement of scientific collaboration in this series of investigations into highenergy cosmic rays. A professor of physics from the university of wisconsin has come up with an app to turn your smartphone into a cosmic ray detector that works in a similar way to those instruments found in high. The detectors are powered via a usb connection and the data can either be recorded. January, 2010 this manual provides information for setting up and using a cosmic ray muon detector crmd with the quarknet version 2. Students in the group are designing an educational array of cosmic ray detectors consisting of fluorescent plastic scintillator, photomultiplier tubes, and data acquisition electronics.