The CosmicWatch Desktop Muon Detector is a self-contained, hand-held cosmic ray muon detector that is valuable for astro/particle physics research applications and outreach. The material cost of each detector is under $100 and it takes a novice student approximately four hours to build their first detector. The detectors are powered via a USB connection and the data can either be recorded directly to a computer or to a microSD card. Arduino- and Python-based software is provided to operate the detector and an online application to plot the data in real-time. In this paper, we describe the various design features, evaluate the performance, and illustrate the detectors capabilities by providing several example measurements.
@article{arxiv.1801.03029,
title = {The CosmicWatch Desktop Muon Detector: a self-contained, pocket sized particle detector},
author = {Spencer N. Axani and Katarzyna Frankiewicz and Janet M. Conrad},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.03029},
year = {2018}
}