Speaker
Description
Cosmic muons constantly reach Earth at a rate of about 1 muon per square centimetre per minute. To provide a safe, simple, and reproducible alternative to high-voltage spark or wire chambers, we developed a three-dimensional scintillator-based detector, the Scintillating Chamber. The detector employs a binary-encoded arrangement of scintillator rods, reducing the number of required sensors to a logarithmic scaling with detector size, with only two sensors per layer. Each layer’s state is represented by a single bit, progressively constraining the possible particle trajectory. The system uses EJ-200 plastic scintillators coupled via wavelength-shifting fibres to custom-designed SiPM circuit boards and an FPGA-based data acquisition system. Beamline tests provided proof of concept and optimisation of optical coupling. Particle tracks are reconstructed and visualised through a custom graphical user interface, demonstrating an efficient and educational approach to muon detection.