MUON DETECTOR

SLOT : E1 + TE1
GROUP NO: 13

Done by:
Madhura Srishti Karthikeyan – 22BLC1116
Achyuth Dhananjai Padmanabhan – 22BLC1084
Afzal Ahmed – 22BLC1068
Raghav Kishore – 22BLC1124
Rishab Naveen – 22BLC1098
 REQUIREMENTS FOR THE PROJECT
● The device consists of a small slab of solid scintillator instrumented with a silicon
photomultiplier (SiPM) to detect scintillation light. It is contained within a light-tight
aluminum enclosure.
● This connects to a readout box consisting of electronics that registers the time of the
event, count number, peak amplitude, and dead-time.
● The threshold for a signal to trigger the data acquisition can be tuned in the
microcontroller (Arduino) software.
● We discuss the individual components for the project below as well as provide pictures
of each component in the supplementary material.
SPECIFIC HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
 SCINTILLATOR
● Scintillators emit fluorescence when a charged particle passes through them and
deposits a fraction of its initial energy due to electromagnetic interactions.
● The amount of emitted light is related to the energy of the incident particle and the
distance the particle traverses through the scintillator.
● In this case, the scintillator responds to this energy because the plastic is doped with a
fluorescing agent that glows very slightly when some kinetic energy is transferred to
the fluorescing molecules.
● Within nanoseconds, the de-excitation of these fluorescing molecules produces
visible light, typically in the 300 to 600 nm wavelength range, that travels through
and exits the scintillator.
 SILICON PHOTOMULTIPLIERS (SIPM)
● The light emitted when a particle travels through the scintillator must be observed
using a light collection device. Traditionally, one attaches scintillator to
photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) which are large, expensive and require high voltages.
● In this case, we use a single SiPM. An SiPM consists of a large number of micro-cells
each composed of silicon P-N junctions.
● It requires only a low reverse bias voltage (positive voltage to the cathode, negative
voltage to the anode), has a peak sensitivity in the blue region where the majority of
scintillators emit most of their light, and is only a few millimeters thick with a cross-
sectional area equal to the size of the photocathode.
● The low reverse bias means that we can use a DC-DC boost converter to power the
circuit.
 ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS AND THEIR SETUP
● There are two PCBs, each with surface mount components that the students will install.
● The simplest of the two boards is used to mount the SiPM and provide bias filtering.
This PCB is mounted directly onto the plastic scintillator on two No. 0 1/4” screws, to
maintain pressure on the SiPM face to ensure good optical contact between the
photocathode area and the plastic scintillator.
● The second PCB contains the main electronics used to amplify and shape the signal
from the SiPM such that it can be measured by the microcontroller. It also filters and
regulates the voltages used in the detector.
● The amplification and shaping of the waveform is accomplished using a dual, rail-to-rail
input and output, operational-amplifiers (op-amp).
● We use a 16 MHz Arduino Nano ATmega328 as a micro-controller and read the data out
to a 0.96” OLED screen and through a mini-USB cable to a computer.
 SOFTWARE COMPONENTS
● For the microcontroller, we will be sending the code through a mini-USB cable from
the computer.
● We will require the Arduino IDE and certain specific libraries (also present in the
IDE).
● We will also require the pyserial module, to run a Python script which will be used to
log the data.
● To simulate the hardware before actualizing it on the PCBs, we will require LTSpice
and/or KiCAD.
 THE LIGHT-TIGHT ENCLOSURE
● The plastic scintillator and SiPM circuit are mounted in a light-tight aluminum
enclosure.
● The enclosure not only keeps the light from the scintillator in, it also protects from
photons from the outside environment. This prevents environmental noise from
producing false signals.
● However, the metal box has to be penetrated to bring in the voltage required to run
the SiPM and output the signal from the SiPM.
● We will use DC jacks and 6” BNC Connectors that are light-tight as well.
 THE CABLES AND ELECTRONICS CASING
● The signal from the SiPM is transmitted out of the light-tight enclosure to an
electronics case via a 6” BNC cable.
● We will be using a simple 2.1 × 5.5 mm DC cable to power the SiPM circuit.
● The electronics case houses the main PCB. There are many design options for the
electronics case.
● It is crucial to ensure that the electronics can be securely mounted with enough room
to allow for the final soldering of connections. There should be at least 3” × 4” × 1”
internal volume to accommodate the electronics.
CIRCUIT DIAGRAM
KiCAD Circuit
EXPECTED OUTPUT
 WORKING OF CIRCUIT
● A charged particle when passed through the scintillator, emits light which start photo-
avalanche in the SiPM and create a positive pulse, width ~0.5 μs, height ~10-100 mV.
● The photon incident on the SiPM will make a measurable voltage pulse that we can
amplify using a non-inverting amplifying circuit and amplified by a factor of ~6.
● Using a peak detector circuit, the pulse is stretched over a period of roughly 100 μs
so that the 16 MHz Arduino Nano is able to measure it.
● The Arduino samples the waveform produced by the peak detector circuit several
times and then use those measurements to calculate the original SiPM pulse
amplitude.
 PLOTTING OF GRAPH
● The OLED screen on the front of the detector is expected to update every second
with the count number, count rate, and a bar indicating the SiPM pulse amplitude of
the most recent event.
● An LED is set to flash every time an event is registered. The detector can be
connected to an oscilloscope through the BNC header on the back of the detector to
view the raw SiPM pulse.
● Using a python based program that allows the user to record data directly to the
computer via a USB port, or connect directly to the website, we plot the data in real-
time.
 EXPECTED GRAPH

● The expected graph will have three plots - SiPM Pulse, Amplified Pulse and Peak
Detector Pulse
● The SiPM pulse will have low amplitude with peak values when Muon is detected.
● Amplified pulse will be identical to the SiPM pulse but scaled up.
● Peak Detector Pulse will represent the points at which the Amplified pulse reaches a
peak value.
Expected Graph
APPLICATIONS
 COINCIDENCE RATE
● Coincidence rate measurements in muon detectors are essential for distinguishing
genuine muon events from background noise or other particles that may trigger the
detector.
● Coincidence measurements involve recording the simultaneous detection of muons
by two or more detector elements. This technique helps improve the accuracy and
reliability of muon detection.
● By measuring the coincidence rate between two detectors we can get an absolute
muon rate measurement as well as angular muon rate.
● Absolute Muon Rate is determined by counting the number of coincident muon
events between the two detectors within a specified time interval. This count
represents the total muon flux, regardless of their arrival direction. It provides a
measure of the overall muon activity at the location of the detectors.
 COINCIDENCE RATE
● Angular Muon Rate distribution is found by analyzing the coincident muon events based
on their arrival directions. This involves dividing the angular space into bins or sectors. By
counting the number of coincident muon events that fall into each bin, we can construct a
histogram or angular profile. The solid angle subtended by each bin is taken into account
for normalization.
● This angular distribution reveals how the muon flux varies with angle relative to the
detectors. It provides information about the directionality of incoming muons, which can
be useful for scientific investigations in fields like particle physics, astrophysics,
geophysics, and more. For instance, in geophysics, it can help in understanding the density
distribution of geological structures, while in astrophysics, it can assist in studying cosmic
ray origins and cosmic ray anisotropy.
 RELATIVE DEPTHS

● Underwater and underground positioning techniques have been limited to those using
classical waves. However, the positioning accuracy is strongly affected by the
conditions of media they propagate such as temperature, salinity, density, elastic
constants, opacity, etc.
● Cosmic-ray muons traveling almost at the speed of light through any kind of material
and their speed is not affected by the media condition they travel as long as their
energies are within the relativistic region.
 RELATIVE DEPTHS

● Utilizing this universality and relativistic nature, cosmic muons have a potential to be
used for positioning the receiver detector located underwater or underground three
dimensionally with a great accuracy
● Since cosmic muons always precipitate from the upper hemisphere, multiple particle
detectors (reference detectors) located above a receiver detector provide the times of
flight between these reference detectors and a receiver detector, and this information
can be simply converted to the distances between these detectors by multiplying the
speed of light in a vacuum.
 FINDING CORRELATIONS
● The correlation between pulse height and energy deposited in a scintillator can be
found by simulating the angular response function using GEANT4.
● This involves modeling the interaction of muons with the scintillator material and
recording the resulting scintillation light and pulse height.
● This correlation is essential for accurately characterizing the detector's response and
extracting information about the energy of incoming particles.
● The muon detector can also be used for finding correlations between muon rate and
altitude. .
● It allows scientists to investigate how cosmic ray interactions with the atmosphere
vary with altitude, leading to insights into atmospheric processes, including the
production of secondary cosmic rays and their impact on cloud formation.
● This information can be valuable for various scientific studies such as geophysics,
atmospheric science, cosmic ray research, and ultimately advances our understanding
of natural phenomena and the properties of subatomic particles.