11–13 May 2026
University of Pittsburgh
US/Eastern timezone

Seeing the Invisible: Mini-CoRTEx and Real-Time 3D Visualization of Cosmic-Ray Muons

11 May 2026, 17:45
15m
David Lawrence Hall 104, University of Pittsburgh

David Lawrence Hall 104, University of Pittsburgh

Speaker

Yuvaraj Elangovan (University of Pittsburgh (US))

Description

We present Mini Cosmic Ray Tracker Experiment (Mini-CoRTEx), a portable plastic scintillator-based detector designed for three-dimensional tracking and real-time visualization of cosmic-ray muons. The system consists of eighteen plastic scintillator tiles, each instrumented with wavelength-shifting fibers and silicon photomultipliers, arranged in three stacked layers with orthogonal x-y segmentation to form a 3x3x3 tracking geometry. Custom multichannel front-end electronics provide signal amplification and discrimination, while a field programmable gate array chip (FPGA) performs coincidence triggering and event counting across the detector layers. The triggered data are transmitted to a Raspberry Pi, where muon trajectories are reconstructed and extrapolated from the physical detector volume to a virtual 8x8x8 grid. The reconstructed tracks are displayed on a digital twin realized by a three-dimensional LED cube in real-time, enabling direct and intuitive visualization of cosmic-ray muon paths. By transforming detector signals into visible spatial tracks, the system serves as an effective platform for public outreach, exhibitions and education in particle physics, while also supporting quantitative measurements of cosmic muon flux and angular distributions in different environments.

Author

Yuvaraj Elangovan (University of Pittsburgh (US))

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