30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 1 The EEE Project Presented by Cristina Sbarra Project Leader: Antonino Zichichi ICRC, July 2007 M. Abbrescia e), S. An l), A. Badalà h), R. Baldini Ferroli b) c), G. Bencivenni c), F. Blanco h), E. Bressan b) f), A. Chiavassa k), C. Chiri i), L. Cifarelli f), F. Cindolo f), E. Coccia d), S. De Pasquale j), M. D'Incecco d), F.L. Fabbri c), V. Frolov b) k), M. Garbini b) f), C. Gustavino d), D. Hatzifotiadou f), G. Imponente b), J. Kim l), P. La Rocca h), F. Librizzi h), A. Maggiora k), H. Menghetti f), S. Miozzi c), R. Moro b) d), M. Panareo i), G.S. Pappalardo h), G. Piragino k), F. Riggi h), F. Romano e), G. Sartorelli f), C. Sbarra b) f), M. Selvi f), S. Serci g), C. Williams f), A. Zichichi a) b) f) l) and R. Zuyenski l) a) CERN, Geneva, Switzerland b) Enrico Fermi Centre, Rome, Italy c) Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (LNF), Italy d) Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), Italy e) University and INFN, Bari, Italy f) University and INFN, Bologna, Italy g) University and INFN, Cagliari, Italy h) University and INFN, Catania, Italy i) University and INFN, Lecce, Italy j) University and INFN, Salerno, Italy k) University and INFN, Turin, Italy l) World Laboratory, Geneva, Switzerland

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 2 Project Overview

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 3 EEE PROJECT Main goals To bring Science in the youths' hearts through the study of the cosmic rays using a frontier detector built and operated by themselves & To study Extreme Energy Events, a frontier field in Cosmic Rays

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 4 GP S  GPS  EEE Project: “La scienza nelle scuole” (Science inside schools) Involve students ! The EEE Project has a modular structure: a "telescope" made of 3 MRPC detectors (Multigap Resistive Plate Chamber), devoted to the observation of cosmic muons, will be installed in many High Schools all over Italy (Licei and Technical Schools).

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 5 EEE Project: “La scienza nelle scuole” (Science inside schools) Involve students ! The students will construct the detectors and partecipate directly to set up the telescope. In this way, they will realize how to transform basic components of common use to a very high precision instrument. Actually they did it!!!

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 6 Status of the EEE Project The project that has been conceived and is leaded by A. Zichichi, started in 2005 with a starting sample of about 20 secondary schools chosen in the whole italian territory The telescope construction has been carried on by members of the schools (both students and teacher) with the support of researchers and technicians from: Centro Fermi, INFN (Bologna, Cagliari, Catania, LNF, LNGS, Lecce e Torino) CERN The “pilot” schools are from 7 towns: Bologna, Cagliari, Catania, Grottaferrata (Roma), L’Aquila, Lecce e Torino. A set of 72 detectors have been built and the installation inside schools started. After installation of the first 24 telescopes the network will soon be heavily upgraded

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 7 The 7 starting towns: Bologna Cagliari Catania Grottaferrata (Roma) L’Aquila Lecce Torino The data obtained by each School will be an original contribution for the studies regarding Cosmic Rays belonging to the EEE class. Dealing with Cosmic Rays, a direct interest will grow among the students to the open problems in the related Physics. The data coming from telescopes in different towns will also be used for search of time correlation between faraway sites.

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 8 Cosmic Rays

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 9 Cosmic rays Even now, 100 years after their discovery, cosmic rays present unknown aspects like: composition, accelerating mechanism, the shape of the energy spectrum at the highest energies (> eV) origin

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 10 Muons at ground Muons are the most abundant charged component of the shower at sea level, while the most of the other components (electrons, protons) are absorbed by the Earth atmosphere. Since muons interact weakly with matter we can detect them inside the school. Furthermore muon reconstruction allows to determine the shower axis direction.

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 11 Telescope performance simulation

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 12 The telescope 82 cm 160 cm 100 cm  Pictorial view of a telescope and final design (also mechanical structure) of the telescope We performed Monte Carlo simulations to study the telescope performances in muon and shower reconstruction. Each tracking plane is made by a 6 (300  m wide) gap MRPC. Details in “Multigap Resistive Plate Chambers for EAS study in the EEE Project”-id 646-HE 2.5, July 7 th

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 13 Angular Resolution and detector acceptance Reconstruction of muon  and  angles Better than 1 degree in muon  angle Better than 2 degree in muon  angle We evaluated the telescope acceptance generating 10 7 muon tracks with incoming directions sampled uniformly in the upper hemisphere. The muon impact point is uniformly sampled in a circle orthogonal to the muon direction and with radius equal to the maximal transverse telescope dimension (135 cm) Each track is considered reconstructed if it crosses all the 3 MRPC planes. The Total Acceptance is 0.34 m 2 sr

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 14 Shower Axis reconstruction Two methods investigated: 1.Using position and the arrival time of the shower front on the detectors at ground; 2.using the reconstructed directions of the muons of the shower Reconstructed zenith angle of the shower where the original one is 0 o (1) (2)

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 15 Preliminary test results

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 16 Efficiency Before final installation inside schools preliminary efficiency tests have been carried on in the pilot towns. All the tested MRPCs show efficiency around 95% at about 18 kV HV Catania  efficiency  rate

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 17 First reconstructed muon Muon track reconstructed

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 18 Some Measurerements Muon rate and pressure Rate vs. distance between MRPC The telescope mechanical structure is equipped with movable system allowing the measure of the muon rate vs. distance between MRPC: we can vary the MRPC distance from 100 to 40 cm

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 19 …and reconstructed muon zenith angle Zenith Angle  zenith projection (deg) Projection of  zenith compared with simulation (black dots)  zenith as measured by the telescope

30 th ICRC – Merida - 10 July 2007C.Sbarra 20 Conclusions The EEE Project aims to bring Science in the youths' hearts trough the study of the cosmic rays using a frontier detector built and operated by themselves. The experiment started in 2005 with the construction of the detectors and today we have 72 MRPC Installation inside schools started in 2006 and by the end of 2007 the 7 pilot towns will have 1-3 running telescope. All the tested MRPCs showed good efficiency and spatial resolution. After installation of the first 24 telescopes the network will soon be heavily upgraded. The GPS synchronization of the telescopes will allow search for time coincidence between faraway sites.