1. Online Muon Capture and Decay Experiment Megan Alexander, Daniel Miner, Wojtek Skulski, Frank Wolfs University of Rochester Work funded by a grant from the APS WYP 2005 and a grant from the NSF.

2. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 2 Overview Purpose: To capture and share data from cosmic muons, making a “real” physics experiment accessible to the public. In this talk: Experimental details Website tour

3. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 3 Motivation Time dilation (special relativity) Classic experiment, popular in advanced physics labs Outreach Mount Washington, NH

4. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 4 Detector (Scintillator + PMT) Experiment Setup Internet DDC-8 Circuit Board (DSP) Cosmic Muons Tools Xilinx Cypress EZ-USB BlackBox Apache XML/SWF Charts AWStats

5. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 5 DDC-8 Developed by Wojtek Skulski. Diagnostic OUT 40 MHz * 10 bits JTAG connector FPGA ADC 40 MHz * 10 bits (8 channels) 16 bidirectional TTL lines + 1 in (pool of extra logic I/O) Analog signal IN 8 channels (only 1 used) with digital offset and gain control RS-232 Logic connectors NIM 16 lines IN, 8 lines OUT USB RAM 500 kB ECL clock IN (optional) micro processor

6. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 6 Typical Muon Signals Stopping Muons: Passing Muons: μ+μ+ μ+μ+ e+e+ μ+μ+ veve μ+μ+ vμvμ

7. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 7 Web View: Waveforms Time constant: 2.1 μ s http://wolfspc.pas.rochester.edu/muon/daq.html

8. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 8 Web View:Energy Spectra http://wolfspc.pas.rochester.edu/muon/EnergySpectra.html Conventional muon lifetime experiments do not exploit DSP for particle ID: this one does!

9. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 9 Downloadable Data http://wolfspc.pas.rochester.edu/muon/DLData.html

10. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 10 Downloadable Data View from Excel, MATLAB

11. APS Meeting March 2006 M.Alexander 11 Summary and Conclusion Physics outreach enabled by hardware, software, web tools. Total unique visitors: