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Register a new userSolar panels as cosmic-ray detectors
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Due to fundamental limitations of accelerators, only cosmic rays can give access to centre-of- mass energies more than one order of magnitude above those reached at the LHC. In fact, extreme energy cosmic rays (1018 eV - 1020 eV) are the only possibility to explore the 100 TeV energy scale in the years to come. This leap by one order of magnitude gives a unique way to open new horizons: new families of particles, new physics scales, in-depth investigations of the Lorentz symmetries. However, the flux of cosmic rays decreases rapidly, being less than one particle per square kilometer per year above 1019 eV: one needs to sample large surfaces. A way to develop large-effective area, low cost, detectors, is to build a solar panel-based device which can be used in parallel for power generation and Cherenkov light detection. Using solar panels for Cherenkov light detection would combine power generation and a non-standard detection device.
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Increasing interest towards the observation of the highest energy cosmic rays has motivated the development of new detection techniques. The properties of the Cherenkov photon pulse emitted in the atmosphere by these very rare particles indicate low-cost semiconductor detectors as good candidates for their optical read-out. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the viability of solar panels for this purpose. The experimental framework resulting from measurements performed with suitably-designed solar cells and large conventional photovoltaic areas is presented. A discussion on the obtained and achievable sensitivities follows.
The Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO) is a distributed cosmic ray observatory that spans over Latin America in a wide range of latitudes and altitudes. One of the main goals of LAGO is to study atmospheric radiation and space weather through the measurement of the secondary particles from cosmic ray flux at ground level using Water Cherenkov Detectors (WCD). Thus, due to differences in the local geomagnetic rigidity cut-off affecting the low energy cosmic rays impinging on the atmosphere and the well-known relation between altitude and the development of the extended atmospheric showers, different secondary particle fluxes are expected at each LAGO site. It is therefore crucial for our objectives to be able to determine the expected flux of secondary particles at any place in the World and for any geomagnetic or atmospheric conditions. To characterize the response of a particular LAGO site we developed ARTI, a complete framework intended to simulate the WCD signals produced by the interaction of the secondary inside the detector. ARTI comprises a simulation sequence by integrating three different simulation tools: a) Magnetocosmics, to account for the geomagnetic field effects on the primary flux; b) CORSIKA, to simulate the atmospheric showers originated on the complete flux of cosmic rays and, thus, to estimate the expected flux of secondary particle at the site; and c) Geant4, for simulating the LAGO detectors response to this secondary flux. In this work, we show the usage of the ARTI framework by calculating the expected flux of signals at eight LAGO sites, covering a wide range of altitudes and rigidity cut-offs to emphasize the capabilities of the LAGO network spanning over Latin America. These results show that we are able to estimate the response of any water Cherenkov detector located at any place in the World, even under evolving atmospheric and geomagnetic conditions.
The detection of photons above 10 keV through MeV and GeV energies is challenging due to the penetrating nature of the radiation, which can require large detector volumes, resulting in correspondingly high background. In this energy range, most detectors in space are either scintillators or solid-state detectors. The choice of detector technology depends on the energy range of interest, expected levels of signal and background, required energy and spatial resolution, particle environment on orbit, and other factors. This section covers the materials and configurations commonly used from 10 keV to > 1 GeV.
The Sun is the nearest astrophysical source with a very intense emission in the X-ray band. The study of energetic events, such as solar flares, can help us to understand the behaviour of the magnetic field of our star. There are in the literature numerous studies published about polarization predictions, for a wide range of solar flares models involving the emission from thermal and/or non-thermal processes, but observations in the X-ray band have never been exhaustive. The gas pixel detector (GPD) was designed to achieve X-ray polarimetric measurements as well as X-ray images for far astrophysical sources. Here we present the possibility to employ this instrument for the observation of our Sun in the X-ray band.
The geomagnetic field causes not only the East-West effect on the primary cosmic rays but also affects the trajectories of the secondary charged particles in the shower, causing their lateral distribution to be stretched along certain directions. Thus both the density of the secondaries near the shower axis and the trigger efficiency of a detector array decrease. The effect depends on the age and on the direction of the showers, thus involving the measured azimuthal distribution. Here the non-uniformity of the azimuthal distribution of the reconstructed events in the ARGO-YBJ experiment is deeply investigated for different zenith angles on the light of this effect. The influence of the geomagnetic field as well as geometric effects are studied by means of a Monte Carlo simulation.
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