Abstract
The Extreme Energy Events experiment (EEE) is a cosmic ray observatory made of about 60 muon telescopes based on Multigap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) detectors. The EEE experiment has two ...main targets: a scientific and a dissemination. The EEE collaboration has also developed a large set of portable scintillator-based detectors, named Cosmic Box (CB), mainly used for educational purposes. The CB allows students to perform cosmic ray counting measurements in several environments. CBs are made of two 15 × 15 × 1 cm scintillators read by two 3 × 3 mm
2
SiPMs operated in coincidence. Three CBs were deployed in Nuraxi Figus and Seruci coal mine to perform an underground measurement of the cosmic muon flux attenuation. High school and university students were directly involved in all the stages of the measurements: from the preliminary measurements to the on-site work and data analysis.
Cosmic ray muons are a penetrating component of extensive air showers created in the Earth atmosphere by the interaction of highly energetic primary particles, mostly protons, which continuously ...bombard our Planet. The secondary cosmic radiation is the result of the complex interplay between the production cross section and the interaction mechanisms with the atmosphere (including the energy loss, multiple scattering and particle decay). Cosmic muons have been considered since several decades as a powerful probe to exploit our environment, from muography of volcanoes to absorption radiography of possible hidden rooms inside large structures, such as Pyramids, to the detection of high-Z illicit nuclear materials inside containers and many other applications of social interest. This paper discusses the possibility to employ the Multigap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPC) of the Extreme Energy Events (EEE) Project as muon tracking detectors to monitor the long term stability of civil buildings and structures when used in conjunction with additional detectors. For this application the average direction of the cosmic muon tracks passing through the MRPC telescope and an additional detector located some distance apart in the same building may be reconstructed with good precision and any small variation over long time acquisition periods may be monitored. The performance of such setup is discussed and experimental results from first coincidence measurements obtained with a 40 × 60 cm2 scintillator detector operated in the same building with one of the EEE telescopes, at about 15 m vertical distance from it, are presented. Simple Monte Carlo and GEANT simulations were also carried out to evaluate typical acceptance values for the operating conditions employed so far, to extrapolate to other geometrical configurations, and to evaluate multiple scattering effects.
The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) Project is an experiment aimed at the detection of secondary cosmic ray muons. It consists of a sparse array of about 60 telescopes, based on Multigap Resistive Plate ...Chambers (MRPCs), mostly distributed throughout the Italian territory, mainly in high schools locations, and at CERN. The telescopes are now operational and taking data since more than ten years with a high duty cycle and detection efficiency. The analysis activity is currently in progress and focused on several items, including the detailed study of the muon ux under dfferent conditions, its connection with atmospheric and solar events, the detection of extensive air showers and the search for long distance correlations between different extensive air showers. In this paper an overall description of the experiment will be given, together with its educational fallout. The operation of the whole array is also discussed by showing the most recent results obtained from the analysis of the collected data.
EEE is an extended cosmic ray observatory, covering more than 10 degrees in latitude and longitude. The relative distances between clusters of telescopes reached the 1200 km, allowing the search for ...rare long distance correlations between cosmic showers. On the other side each EEE telescope is capable of measuring the flux of secondary particles, opening to the study of low energy phenomena such as solar activity and Forbush decreases. An introduction to the observaotry and updates on the main scientific results are presented. Last updates on the searches for rare correlated showers, with a set of long distance correlation candidate events are also reported.
A variable gain front-end electronics for drift chambers Panareo, M.; Chiarello, G.; Cuna, F. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
01/2023, Letnik:
1046
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The cluster counting/timing technique in a drift chamber allows to have a bias free impact parameter estimate. The application of this technique requires to measuring and counting the arrival times ...of each individual ionization cluster to a sense wire. In a Helium based gas mixture the rise time of the signal from a cluster is approximately 1 ns, therefore a readout electronic front-end with high linearity, low distortion and sufficiently high bandwidth is required. Furthermore, it would be useful for the readout electronics to be able to easily adapt its gain to the detector’s operating point. The use of a variable gain amplifier (VGA) allows to meet the needs arising from the changed operating conditions of the detector. The market offers components capable of satisfying all these needs with dimensions compatible with high-density drift chambers. A high linear, low distortion, remotely controllable, about 1GHz bandwidth and compact VGA is presented together with the measurements performed.
Radiation damage of polycrystalline diamond exposed to 62 MeV protons Alemanno, E; Caricato, A P; Chiodini, G ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
12/2013, Letnik:
730
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We irradiated two diamond detectors with 62 MeV energy proton beam up to an integrated fluence of about 21015 protons/cm2 at INFN-LNS in Catania (Italy). The detectors were made of two high purity ...poly-crystal diamond sensors. The electric contacts of the two diamond sensors were from different sources and made with different techniques: a proprietary DLC/Pt/Au electric contact and our own novel UV Laser technique. We collected 120 GeV and 62 MeV proton beam data, before and after irradiation, respectively, to extract the radiation damage constant of one poly-crystal diamond sensor by using single crystal diamond detector response as reference.
The design of the MEG II experiment Baldini, A. M.; Baracchini, E.; Bemporad, C. ...
The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields,
05/2018, Letnik:
78, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The MEG experiment, designed to search for the
μ
+
→
e
+
γ
decay, completed data-taking in 2013 reaching a sensitivity level of
5.3
×
10
-
13
for the branching ratio. In order to increase the ...sensitivity reach of the experiment by an order of magnitude to the level of
6
×
10
-
14
, a total upgrade, involving substantial changes to the experiment, has been undertaken, known as MEG II. We present both the motivation for the upgrade and a detailed overview of the design of the experiment and of the expected detector performance.
The final results of the search for the lepton flavour violating decay
μ
+
→
e
+
γ
based on the full dataset collected by the MEG experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institut in the period 2009–2013 and ...totalling
7.5
×
10
14
stopped muons on target are presented. No significant excess of events is observed in the dataset with respect to the expected background and a new upper limit on the branching ratio of this decay of
B
(
μ
+
→
e
+
γ
)
<
4.2
×
10
-
13
(90 % confidence level) is established, which represents the most stringent limit on the existence of this decay to date.