Activities of INFN Roma Tor Vergata
High School Students’ Water Cherenkov Detector
During last decade a lot of outreach activities were born to bring Science in the youths’ hearts through the study of elementary particles physics using frontier detectors. The aim of this project, i-SpeChe, is to develop a multipurpose prototype detector for a wide range of experiments from the study of natural radioactivity to cosmic rays flux using a SiPM matrix easily coupled to different scintillators or, to realize a Water Cherenkov Detector, to water tank. All the detectors used for outreach activities must be robust, easy to use and transport, LV based and economic. The choice is usually scintillator+ SiPM and this limits the knowledge of the wide range of existing detectors used in particles and astroparticle physics. Our effort is to realize a Cherenkov detector coupling water to a SiPM matrix. Cherenkov detectors are now found in a wide variety of unique applications throughout physics, astrophysics, and biomedicine, with more powerful, and larger devices continuing to be developed and implemented. Particular examples include the many detectors at particle accelerators for hadronic particle identification, the large water Cherenkov detectors used for neutrino detection both for astrophysics and accelerator studies, and the imaging air Cherenkov telescopes used to study very-high-energy γ rays in cosmic radiation. Most of the experiments based on Cherenkov effect in water use PMT. The use of SiPM coupled with water is still under study and i-SpeChe is the first approach for the realization of an outreach Water Cherenkov detector with SiPM.