Solar panels as cosmic-ray detectors
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1411.5560,
title = {Solar panels as cosmic-ray detectors},
author = {Carlo Stella and Michele Palatiello and Pedro Assis and Pedro Brogueira and Catarina Espirito Santo and Patricia Goncalves and Mario Pimenta and Alessandro De Angelis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1411.5560},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
Science with the New Generation of High Energy Gamma-ray experiments, 10th Workshop 04-06 June 2014 Lisbon - Portugal