QuarkNet and Cosmic Ray Muon Flux Experiments Florida Academy of Sciences Spring Conference 2009

1. QuarkNet and Cosmic Ray Muon Flux Experiments Florida Academy of Sciences Spring Conference 2009 Alfred Menendez and Michael Abercrombie with Dr. Marcus Hohlmann from Florida Institute of Technology

2. Outline • What is QuarkNet? • How are cosmic rays and muons related? • How do we detect muons? • What kind of analysis can be done through QuarkNet? • What do we plan to do in the future?

3. What is QuarkNet? • Educational outreach program run by Fermilab, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. • Provides the basis for understanding frontline physics research currently being conducted. • Involves high school students and teachers in an effort to inform and excite them about this research.

4. What Are Cosmic Rays? • 90% are protons (other 10% are nuclei) from outside of our solar system • Travel at nearly the speed of light • Observed to have reached energies up to 1021 eV • Ideas about possible sources of these high-energies include: • Active galactic nuclei • Quasars • Gamma Ray Bursts • Dark Matter

5. How Do Cosmic Rays Form Muons? • Cosmic rays strike the Earth’s atmosphere, undergo nuclear reactions produce pions (π) • Pions then decay into a muon (μ) and a muon neutrino (v). • Some muons decay into two neutrinos and an electron (e), while others last long enough to reach the Earth’s surface.

6. How Do We Detect Muons? The setup we use to detect muons includes: • Two scintillation paddles • Photomultiplier tube • Data Acquisition Board (supplied by QuarkNet) • Computer

7. How Do We Detect Muons? • Muon passes through paddles • Muon generates light burst in scintillator paddles • The Photo Multiplier Tube (PMT) converts light burst into electric pulse which is read by the QuarkNet Data AcQuisition card (DAQ) • The DAQ card connects to a computer which records the data (via HyperTerminal)

8. What Does the DAQ Card Do? • Our DAQ card is set to record only coincidences • A coincidence occurs when both paddles register a muon “hit” within a preset amount of time (25 ns) • This arrangement helps to reduce noise and false “hits” • This allows for some interesting experiments and analysies

9. Data Performance Study • Used to determine quality of data • Can see how much “noise” is in the data • Many short pulses with few longer pulses indicates a noisy counter • Time over threshold is a measure of energy deposited in scintillator for any given muon Number of PMT Pulses Time over Threshold (nanoseconds)

10. Flux Introduction • Flux is a detector-independent quantity • Gives number of particles per amount of time to pass through an area. • Varies with different thresholds. Flux (events/m2/60 seconds) Time UTC (hours) (Flux = particles/area/time)

11. Flux Orientation Study • Detector is horizontal (i.e. in the x-y plane) Flux (events/m2/60 seconds) • Using data from channel 1 • Flux average is about 750 events/m2/60 sec Time UTC (hours) (Flux = particles/area/time)

12. Flux Orientation Study • Detector is vertical • (i.e. in the x-z plane) • Using data from channel 1 • Flux average is about 450 events/m2/60 sec Flux = particles/area/time

13. Flux Dependence on Threshold • Detector is horizontal • Flux is dependent on threshold of detector • Threshold is level at which DAQ card starts recording data • Flux increases with decreasing threshold Flux = particles/area/time

14. Current Work • We are currently using a pulse-height spectrometer to measure the energy deposited in the paddles by the muons • Plan to involve this equipment in future experiments • Working to improve quality of our data Number of muons Energy lost by muon (KeV) Number of muons Energy lost by muon (KeV)

15. Questions? Acknowledgements: http://www.cosmicrays.org/ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/cosmic_rays.html http://cosmic.lbl.gov/more/SeanFottrell.pdf