Detecting Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with Smartphones

Cosmic rays which encounter the Earth's atmosphere produce showers of muons and high-energy photons, which can be detected using a smartphone camera.  The CRAYFIS experiment was devised to observe cosmic rays at ultra-high energy (UHE) using the existing network of smartphones as a ground detector array.  We'll describe our custom app, our lab measurements of smartphone efficiency, and our latest projections for the sensitivity of the CRAYFIS array to UHE cosmic rays.

Speaker: Michael Mulhearn, UC Davis