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CERNatschool_DRN000211-v1-0_manwood_muons.pdf (89.93 kB)

Investigating muons with the Timepix hybrid silicon pixel detector

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posted on 2014-09-26, 15:42 authored by Tom WhyntieTom Whyntie, C. Warren et al.

The muon is an elementary particle, a lepton, similar to the electron, but with a much heavier mass. About one muon reaches every square centimetre of the Earth's surface per minute. When cosmic rays interact with molecules in the upper atmosphere pi mesons initially are produced. These decay mostly into muons and muon neutrinos. Most muons are generated at an altitude of 15 km. The CERN@school particle detector, a hybrid silicon pixel detector based upon the Timepix microchip technology [1] developed by the Medipix 2 Collaboration [2], was used to detect muons. Muons were identified as straight tracks longer than 2 cm on the given screen. As the solar wind travels at on average about 400 km/s a delay in the number of muons detected should reflect that delay and show a similar pattern to the solar activity with a delay of about 4 days.

Please note that T. Whyntie is not an author, but has uploaded this poster to FigShare on behalf of the authors. This is DRN000211 in the CERN@school document inventory.

[1] X. Llopart et al.: "Timepix, a 65k programmable pixel readout chip for arrival time, energy and/or photon counting measurements", Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A. 581 (2007) 485-494 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2007.08.079

[2] http:/medipix.web.cern.ch

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