A Terrella Device for Simulating Aurora-Like Phenomena in a Box

International audience; A Terrella device was developed and setup in Trieste in 2006 to be used as an experimental training device during practicum sessions of the Advanced International School on Space Weather at ICTP. The Terrella consisted of a vacuum chamber, where an aluminum sphere with an embedded permanent magnet bar mimics the Earth (Terrella) and its magnetic field, and a system of electrodes is set to a high potential difference to generate an electron flow (particle wind) that ionizes the residual air around the sphere. This results in aurora-like glowing patterns whose geometry is dependent on the orientation and distance of the bar magnet, so that various configurations can be experimented. This Terrella device proved to be an effective tool not only for academic but also for outreach purposes. We will briefly present both applications, focusing in particular on the latter, and on the planned use for IHY EPO activities

Steps towards the hyperfine splitting measurement of the muonic hydrogen ground state: pulsed muon beam and detection system characterization

The high precision measurement of the hyperfine splitting of the muonic-hydrogen atom ground state with pulsed and intense muon beam requires careful technological choices both in the construction of a gas target and of the detectors. In June 2014, the pressurized gas target of the FAMU experiment was exposed to the low energy pulsed muon beam at the RIKEN RAL muon facility. The objectives of the test were the characterization of the target, the hodoscope and the X-ray detectors. The apparatus consisted of a beam hodoscope and X-rays detectors made with high purity Germanium and Lanthanum Bromide crystals. In this paper the experimental setup is described and the results of the detector characterization are presented.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures, published and open access on JINS

A Terrella Device for Simulating Aurora-Like Phenomena in a Box

International audienceA Terrella device was developed and setup in Trieste in 2006 to be used as an experimental training device during practicum sessions of the Advanced International School on Space Weather at ICTP. The Terrella consisted of a vacuum chamber, where an aluminum sphere with an embedded permanent magnet bar mimics the Earth (Terrella) and its magnetic field, and a system of electrodes is set to a high potential difference to generate an electron flow (particle wind) that ionizes the residual air around the sphere. This results in aurora-like glowing patterns whose geometry is dependent on the orientation and distance of the bar magnet, so that various configurations can be experimented. This Terrella device proved to be an effective tool not only for academic but also for outreach purposes. We will briefly present both applications, focusing in particular on the latter, and on the planned use for IHY EPO activities

The prototype of the MICE Electron\u2013Muon Ranger: Design, construction and test

Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) and its goal to demonstrate the feasibility of ionization cooling represent the first step toward a neutrino factory. Muons in MICE are produced by pions which derive from the interaction of protons with a target. Muons being short lived particles, a special cooling procedure has to be developed, to be able to reduce the emittance quickly. MICE intends to measure the emittance value with a 0.1% accuracy before and after the cooling element; thus a detector able to reconstruct and identify individual particles is required. The presence of electrons due to muon decay introduces a systematic error on the emittance and cooling measurements. For this reason a particle identification system is being developed based on a totally active scintillator tracker/calorimeter (Electron\u2013Muon Ranger (EMR)). The detector consists of 40 planes of extruded scintillator bars 1 m long; the bars are read out with 0.8 mm WLS fibers coupled to multianode photomultipliers. The readout segmentation will be chosen accordingly to the rate (600 good muons per 1 ms spill every 1 s). This paper describes the design, construction and test at the CERN PS T9-line of the first small size prototype of the EMR with full analog readout, consisting of eight layers (4 x and 4 y) with 10 bars 19 cm long each

Silicon photomultipliers for scintillating trackers

In recent years, silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) have been proposed as a new kind of readout device for scintillating detectors in many experiments. A SiPM consists of a matrix of parallel-connected pixels, which are independent photon counters working in Geiger mode with very high gain (similar to 10(6)). This contribution presents the use of an array of eight SiPMs (manufactured by FBK-irst) for the readout of a scintillating bar tracker (a small size prototype of the Electron Muon Ranger detector for the MICE experiment). The performances of the SiPMs in terms of signal to noise ratio, efficiency and time resolution will be compared to the ones of a multi-anode photomultiplier tube (MAPMT) connected to the same bars. Both the SiPMs and the MAPMT are interfaced to a VME system through a 64 channel MAROC ASIC

The prototype of the MICE Electron-Muon Ranger: Design, construction and test

Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) and its goal to demonstrate the feasibility of ionization cooling represent the first step toward a neutrino factory. Muons in MICE are produced by pions which derive from the interaction of protons with a target. Muons being short lived particles, a special cooling procedure has to be developed, to be able to reduce the emittance quickly. MICE intends to measure the emittance value with a 0.1% accuracy before and after the cooling element; thus a detector able to reconstruct and identify individual particles is required. The presence of electrons due to muon decay introduces a systematic error on the emittance and cooling measurements. For this reason a particle identification system is being developed based on a totally active scintillator tracker/calorimeter (Electron-Muon Ranger (EMR)). The detector consists of 40 planes of extruded scintillator bars I m long; the bars are read out with 0.8 mm WLS fibers coupled to multianode photomultipliers. The readout segmentation will be chosen accordingly to the rate (600 good muons per 1 ms spill every 1 s). This paper describes the design, construction and test at the CERN PS T9-line of the first small size prototype of the EMR with full analog readout, consisting of eight layers (4 x and 4 y) with 10 bars 19 cm long each. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

A shashlik calorimeter readout with silicon photomultipliers with no amplification of the output signal

Silicon PhotoMultipliers are silicon photodetectors that can be used to replace the photomultiplier tubes in many experimental situations. In this article we describe the performance of SiPMs as a readout system of a shashlik calorimeter composed of 70 11.5x11.5 cm(2) 4mm thick tiles of scintillator and 69 11.5x11.5 cm(2) 1.5 mm thick tiles of lead for a total of similar to 19 radiation lengths; the light is collected by 144 1.2 mm wave-length-shifter (WLS) fibers grouped in bundles of nine for a total of 16 channels. The SiPMs are manufactured by FBK-irst and have a sensitive area of 9 mm(2). The calorimeter has been tested at CERN using both a low (PS T9 beamline) and high (SPS H4 beamline) energy beam in 2010

A SiPM Based Readout System for Shashlik Calorimeters: Status and Perspectives

In recent years Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) have been proposed as a new type of readout system for scintillating detectors in many experiments. SiPMs consist of a matrix of parallel-connected silicon micro-pixels, which are independent photon counters working in limited Geiger mode with very high gain (106). This contribution presents the use of SiPMs (manufactured by FBK-irst) as a readout system of scintillator-lead shashlik calorimeters. The calorimeter under test is composed of 130 tiles (65 of scintillator and 65 of lead) with an area of 11.5x11.5 cm2 and a total thickness of 18 radiation lengths. The scintillation light is readout using 144 wavelengthshifter (WLS) fibers with a diameter of 1.2 mm and brought to large area SiPMs, characterized by a high dynamic range (6400 pixels). A custom board based on the MAROC3 ASIC has been used for the readout of the SiPMs signals. The performances of the calorimeter and of the readout system have been tested at the CERN PS-T9 and the SPS-H2 beamlines with electrons up to 150 GeV

A shashlik calorimeter readout with silicon photomultipliers with no amplification of the output signal

Silicon PhotoMultipliers are silicon photodetectors that can be used to replace the photomultiplier tubes in many experimental situations. In this article we describe the performance of SiPMs as a readout system of a shashlik calorimeter composed of 70 11.5x11.5 cm^2 4 mm thick tiles of scintillator and 69 11.5x11.5 cm^2 1.5 mm thick tiles of lead for a total of 3c 19 radiation lengths; the light is collected by 144 1.2 mm wave-length-shifter (WLS) fibers grouped in bundles of nine for a total of 16 channels. The SiPMs are manufactured by FBK-irst and have a sensitive area of 9 mm^2. The calorimeter has been tested at CERN using both a low (PS T9 beamline) and high (SPS H4 beamline) energy beam in 2010