- Oplanim combines everyday technology with advanced scientific imagery
- Antimatter detection is now possible using recycled smartphone -camera technology
- The Gigapixel unit could reveal fine details of particle collisions instantly
At Cern’s Antimatter Factory, the AEGIS collaboration is investigating a new approach to discovering one of nature’s rarest phenomena: antiproton -annihilation.
EENEWS Reports the team, led by Professor Christoph Hugenschmidt from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), has developed an experimental detector using sensors originally designed for mobile phone cameras.
Instead of creating a new sensor system from the bottom, the researchers recycled the sixty 64-megapixel mobile camera sensors to form a 3.84-gigapixel array called Oplanim, map for optical photon and antimatic image. This compound detector can observe where anti -protons collide with drugs and are wiped out in a flash of energy.
From mobile phones to anti -matie research
“For AEGIS to work, we need a detector with incredibly high spatial resolution, and mobile camera sensors have pixels less than 1 micrometer,” explains Francesco Guatieri, Main Surgeon at TUM.
To customize the scientific use sensors, the team had to use intensive micro-enginering to remove camera sensors in layers designed for mobile phone electronics.
“We had to remove the first layers of the sensors made to handle the advanced integrated electronics of mobile phones,” says Guatieri. This process allowed the sensors to capture the light patterns associated with wiping out events.
Despite their origins, the mobile sensors do not compromise the benefit. In fact, the new detector offers a 35 times improvement in real -time resolution compared to previous methods.
“In the past, photographic records were the only option, but they lacked real -time functions,” adds Guatieri.
“Our solution, demonstrated for antiprotons and directly applicable to antihydrogen, combines photographic plate level solution, real-time diagnosis, self-calibration and a good particle collection surface, all in a device.”
The excitement detector allows researchers to observe annihilation events in real time with a resolution of approx. 0.6 micrometer, fine enough to distinguish between different particles created during the process.
“This is a game-changing technology for observing the small shifts due to gravity in an antihydrogen bar that travels horizontally, and it can also find wider applications in experiments where high-position resolution is crucial, or to develop high resolution trackers,” said Aegis spokesman Dr. Ruggero Caravita.
“This extraordinary solution also allows us to distinguish between different wiping out fragments and paves the way for new research on low energy antiparticle in materials.”
The consequences of this work extend beyond anti -material research. The ability of excitement to trace particles with such precision could benefit a wide range of experiments, all with a cheap model built from existing consumer technology.
