High School Cosmic Ray Projectsin Europe

Gregory Snow / University of Nebraska

To replaceDr. Bob Van Eijk / NIKHEF, Amsterdam

1.HiSPARC in the Netherlands

2.Report on 2nd CRSP meeting(Cosmic Ray School Projects)

Lisbon, Portugal, September 9, 2006

European High School Cosmic Ray Sites

• Reporting at the Lisbon meeting:• Portugal• The Netherlands• Belgium• Greece• Italy• Denmark• Poland• Russia• Sweden

Group photo from first CRSP meeting

NIKHEF, Amsterdam, 7-8 March 2005

One slide summary of the situation in Europe

• There are a few mature and several emerging like-minded efforts• Teams of high school teachers and students work with university physics groups to study extensive air showers using school-based detectors• Projects embrace both educational and scientific goals• All projects employ plastic scintillators placed on high school rooftops, except EEE in Italy which will employ Multi-Gap Resistive Plate Chambers• GPS receivers give local time stamp for cosmic ray events recorded locally, internet allows teams to share data and search for building-sized or city-sized showers and long-distance correlations • Most efforts are/have developed readout electronics, data acquisition software and analysis techniques independently, relying on local expertise• Full fledged start-up or expansion limited by funding and manpower• Desire for a more global, unified approach to eliminate duplication of effort and to standardize/share detectors, procedures, data format, curriculum materials, …

www.hisparc.nl

At present: 5 clusters in NL, with national project manager Groningen, Utrecht, Nijmegen, Leiden, Amsterdam (each with their own leader)

Sites in The Netherlands

At present: About 42 detector stations operational or pending

Sites in The Netherlands

GPSantennas

Present price per school:6500 Euros(20% cost is scintillator)

Sites in The Netherlands

Car top ski racks!

Status HiSPARC

Amsterdam: 20 detectors

Groningen: : 4 detectors

Leiden: 7 detectors

Nijmegen: 9 detectors

Utrecht: : 2 detectors

Difficult to keep Difficult to keep detectors online.detectors online.

Annual Symposium

April 2006

5mPORTUGAL

Sites in Portugal

9

150 Km5 High

schools in

Lisbon

3 High schools

in Lisbon metropol

[3-30]Km

2 High schools in Beja

PORTUGAL

Sites in Portugal

• Beja

Belgium

The HELYCON Detector Module

Greece

The EEE project (Extreme Energy Events)

The physics and the detector

F.Riggi, for the EEE Collaboration

Department of Physics and Astronomy and INFN, Catania

Lisboa, September 9, 2006

Carbon layerMylar

glass

glass

glass

glass

glass

glass

Mylar

Carbon layer

Pick-up electrode

Gas gaps ~ 300 m

Pick-up electrode

Anode 0 V

Cathode -10 kV

(-2 kV)

(-4 kV)

(-6 kV)

(-8 kV)

Multi-gap Resistive Plate ChambersThe basic working principles

Developed by the ALICE TOF group, to achieve excellent time resolution (40 ps) and efficiency

Each MRPC is a stack of resistive plates, transparent to the avalanches generated inside the gas gaps.

The induced signal on ext.electrodes is the sum over all the gaps

1013 eV 1014 eV 1015 eV 1016 eV

COSMOS Simulations of proton-induced air showers in Catania metropolitan area

Physics topics to investigate

• Correlation between telescopes not too far away (i.e. in the same town) may allow the detection of extended showers initiated by high energy primaries.

km

kmMC simulation (made with the COSMOS generator) of an Extensive Air Shower induced by a 1017 eV proton.

At the ground level 1 million muons (red dots) arrive, over an area with radius at least 2 km.

Lisbon, 9 September 2006

Toward a European

OrganisationJan-Willem van Holten & Bob van Eijk

International organization: Why?

• Provide platform to share experiences

• To optimise information exchange between the various participants:

– Specific scientific knowledge

– Instruction material for high-school teachers

– Instruction material for high-school students

• Make efficient use of limited manpower

• Scientific co-operation

Advisory BoardAdvisory Board

Organisation…

Steering GroupSteering Group

Physics GroupPhysics Group

Detectors GroupDetectors Group

ELO GroupELO Group

Curriculum GroupCurriculum Group

DocumentationDocumentation

& Web Group& Web Group

DatabaseDatabase

& DAQ Group& DAQ GroupPR, Editorial &PR, Editorial &

Speaker BoardSpeaker Board

Aiming toward a worldwide networkof cosmic ray detectors