Abstract
The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) Project is devoted to the study of Extensive Atmospheric Showers through a network of muon telescopes, installed in High Schools, with the further aim of introducing young students to particle and astroparticle physics. Each telescope is a tracking detector composed of three Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPC) with an active area of 1.60 × 0.80 m2. Their characteristics are similar to the ones built for the Time Of Flight array of the ALICE Experimentat LHC . The EEE Project started with a few pilot towns, where the telescopes have been taking data since 2008, and it has been constantly extended, reaching at present more than 50 MRPCs telescopes. They are spread across Italy with two additional stations at CERN, covering an area of around 3 × 105 km2, with a total surface area for all the MRPCs of 190 m2. A comprehensive description of the MRPCs network is reported here: efficiency, time and spatial resolution measured using cosmic rays hitting the telescopes. The most recent results on the detector and physics performance from a series of coordinated data acquisition periods are also presented.
Highlights
The Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPCs) used in the Energy Events (EEE) Project [5, 6] have six gas gaps of 300 μm, obtained interleaving two glass plates of 164 × 85 × 0.19 cm3, coated with resistive paint, with five floating glass plates (158 × 82 × 0.11 cm3), by means of commercial fishing line
The MRPCs particle rate is normalized applying a barometric coefficient evaluated in each station, and the high sensitivity of the telescopes allows to detect this rapid variations, ∼ 5%, behaving as a solar monitor array with wide coverage and with precise timing
The EEE network observations are generally highly correlated with neutron monitor stations, as in figure 6, these are more sensitive to low-energy primaries, whereas muons detected in the EEE telescopes originate from events of higher energy in the atmosphere
Summary
The MRPCs used in the EEE Project [5, 6] have six gas gaps of 300 μm, obtained interleaving two glass plates of 164 × 85 × 0.19 cm, coated with resistive paint, with five floating glass plates (158 × 82 × 0.11 cm3), by means of commercial fishing line Their basic layout is shown in figure 2. 15 mm thick, ensure the rigidity of the structure which is enclosed in an aluminum box These wide active area MRPCs are mounted horizontally on a metallic frame with vertical distances ranging between 0.3 and 1.0 m depending on the stations (figure 1). The data acquisition chain is controlled by a LabView program running on a PC connected to the VME crate via an USB-VME bridge
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