Level of Education
5 years of post-secondary education
ECTS
3 credits
Training Structure
College of Sciences
Number of hours
20h
Description
The lab exercises focus on the detection and measurement of cosmic rays (muons).
The goal will be to become familiar with a data acquisition system designed for measuring cosmic rays (primarily muons). Students will need to understand how the various components of the acquisition chain work individually (power supplies, photomultipliers, scintillators, discriminators, oscilloscopes, etc.) and then build their own acquisition system using these components. One objective of the system could be to determine the mass of the muon, but other applications are possible and are left to the students’ imagination.
Students will then need to collect data using their devices and analyze that data, taking into account the systematic and statistical errors in the dataset.
Objectives
The objective of this course unit is to enable students to master the various standard components of a data acquisition chain
Mandatory Prerequisites
Basics of:
- General knowledge of particle-matter interactions and the principles behind conventional detectors, as described in the M2 CCP module “Experimental Astroparticles 2”
- Special relativity and relativistic kinematics,
- Nuclear and Particle Physics
- General Physics Course (M1 Level)
Recommended prerequisites:
- Mathematics for Physics
Knowledge Assessment
Lab sessions will be conducted in pairs or groups of three, depending on class size.
At the end of the lab sessions, a report will be submitted and graded based on the results obtained, the writing, and the clarity of the explanation. This grade will constitute the assessment grade.
Course Outline
- Getting acquainted with the various devices that make up the data acquisition system.
- Initial measurements using a photomultiplier (study of how the response varies as a function of the distance from and intensity of the light source, saturation, etc.)
- Creation of a signal measurement chain for each group to process signals from cosmic muons.
- Data collection over several days
- Data analysis (determination of the muon's mass and measurement uncertainties, etc.)
- Drafting the report