TRC%20

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TRC The portuguese Cosmic Rays Telescope
2nd Workshop on Cosmic Rays in Schools
Projects September 9th, 2006, Lisboa, Portugal
a brief status report
Pedro Abreu
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Remainder
Reaching Schools w/ Detectors!

• Project Ciência Viva, ready to acquire data.
• Objectives place cosmic rays detectors
  in the roofs of high-schools.
• Promote the outreach of high energy physics
  through the use of a real detection station, with
  the help of the teachers and students using it.
• IST 10 High Schools in the game at the moment
  8 in the district of Lisboa, 2 in Beja (9
  installed) Study of Time Correlations at Large
  Distances ?

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Long Distante Time Correlations

• Schools in Lisboa and Beja,
• Plan to repeat/extend the measurement of
  Observation of Time Correlations
  in Cosmic Rays O. Carrell e M.
  Martin Dep. Ph. Nuc. Corpusc.
  Univ. Genebra, Suíça,
  UGVA-DPNC-1994/1-162

an excess of quadruple hits, within ?t0.62ms,
was observed w/ S4.8?

• Can we set-up an International Collaborative
  effort towards a scientific goal ?
• - share data, e-mail reports, news alarms

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The .pt Detector Stations
10 stations in high-schools (E ), 1 central at
IST
6 stations inside Lisboa,
E8
E 6


E 2
E 5

E1

LIP

IST

E 4



E 3
12 Km
12 Km
3 in suburbs of Lisboa....
E7
150 Km
...and 2 in the south centre of the country (Beja)
BEJA
E 9
E3 (Lisboa)
E 10
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Station of 3 detectors

• Three detector units (with GPS time-tag) are
  placed at vertexes of a triangle, in the roof of
  the high-schools.

(IST roof)
(Amadora roof)
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A detector consists of

• Plastic scintillator, with 1m x 0.5 m and 10 cm
  of depth, wrapped in aluminium foil and black
  tape
• A trapezoidal light-guide, wrapped as above
• A single photomultiplier (made by Hamamatsu)
• A power box specially developped to drive the
  HV converter from H., controlled by a PC
  running LABView.
• Detector inside an acrylic box, wrappedin
  reflective tape

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Data Acquisition

• Developped Data Acquisition Board, 100 MHz, 6
  channels input, able to handle signals from the
  photomultipliers and from the GPS
• I2C Protocol implemented via parallel port to
  drive the commands to the HV power box, and
  received read values and temperature
• 4 Triggers implemented inLIP-PAD, via the
  programmableALTERA, and can be changed
• Data Acquisition controlled via LABView (1
  station with full license, 10 stations
  withruntime licenses).

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DAQ ROOT Interface

• Developped an interface from the LABView program
  to write all the relevant data (signals and
  header information e.g, GPS registers)
• Time tag of a station at a resolution of 100 ns,
  achieved by saving twonumbers, obtained from
  a50 MHz clock-counter atthe times of arrival of
• PPS signal from GPS
• Triggered event
• Complemented by the GPS Info second(recd
  through RS232 port)

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Status report

• Detectors installed in the roof of 9 schools,
  incl. Beja !, after 1 year Pedagogical Operation
  (10th School stalled for works)
• GPS circuit designed, prototype constructed and
  tested -gt already installed in the 9 schools
• Few loose ends to tie up
• Strategies for Data Analysis, Simulation and
  Recons-truction started to be tested -gt talk by
  Lina Moniz
• Readout of time/GPS info implemented in the
  acquisition
• ROOT Interface implemented in DAQ -gt Data Analysis

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WHAT NEXT ?!

• Start to take data in the TRC stations
• Prepare update courses for teachers
• Build and responsabilize local scientific teams
• Prepare standard experiments and regular
  calibration procedures
• Collect the data, analyse it in 1 station
• Analyse the data from different stations
• Search for long-distance time correlations
• Start to prepare for another proposal of further
  10-20 schools (50??)