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arXiv · 1411.5560

Solar panels as cosmic-ray detectors

Carlo Stella·Michele Palatiello·Pedro Assis·Pedro Brogueira·Catarina Espirito Santo·Patricia Goncalves·Mario Pimenta·Alessandro De Angelis
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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.

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Carlo Stella, Michele Palatiello, Pedro Assis, Pedro Brogueira, Catarina Espirito Santo, Patricia Goncalves, Mario Pimenta, Alessandro De Angelis. 2014-11-20. Solar panels as cosmic-ray detectors. https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.5560

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