A novel particle detector for monitoring the Cosmic Ray flux at advVirgo

Single muons from extensive air-showers, originated in the interaction between cosmic rays and the Earth’s atmosphere, can propagate into low noise facilities, like underground research laboratories or gravitational wave detectors, and can contribute to the noise level of the experiments. The goal is to investigate and veto these possible systematic effects by single muons on the mirrors and the entire interferometer, and by that, to improve the overall sensitivity of the instrument.
For this purpose, a monitoring system based on a network of scintillators is in development. The scintillation detectors presented here are readout with Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) and are based on detectors developed for the surface instrumentation of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
These R&D detectors can be seen as a blueprint for monitoring instruments of next-generation gravitational wave experiments, such as the planned Einstein Telescope. The contribution includes R&D ideas towards an appropriate data acquisition (DAQ) system for the distributed network of scintillators, developing a real time monitoring data stream for the Einstein-Telescope and as well as the handling of the measurement data and its analysis.