Stefano Grazzi

The interaction of a high-current O(100 µA), medium energy O(10 GeV) electron beam with a thick target O(1m) produces an overwhelming shower of standard model particles in addition to hypothetical light dark matter particles. While most of the radiation (gamma, electron/positron) is contained in the thick target, deep penetrating particles (muons, neutrinos, and light dark matter particles) propagate over a long distance, producing high-intensity secondary beams. Using sophisticated Monte Carlo simulations based on FLUKA and GEANT4, we explored the characteristics of secondary muons and neutrinos and (hypothetical) dark scalar particles produced by the interaction of the Jefferson Lab 11 GeV intense electron beam with the experimental Hall-A beam dump. Considering the possible beam energy upgrade, this study was repeated for a 22 GeV CEBAF beam.

This paper describes the simulation framework of the extreme energy events (EEE) experiment. EEE is a network of cosmic muon trackers, each made of three multi-gap resistive plate chambers (MRPC), able to precisely measure the absolute muon crossing time and the muon integrated angular flux at the ground level. The response of a single MRPC and the combination of three chambers have been implemented in a GEANT4-based framework (GEMC) to study the telescope response. The detector geometry, as well as details about the surrounding materials and the location of the telescopes have been included in the simulations in order to realistically reproduce the experimental set-up of each telescope. A model based on the latest parametrization of the cosmic muon flux has been used to generate single muon events. After validating the framework by comparing simulations to selected EEE telescope data, it has been used to determine detector parameters not accessible by analysing experimental data only, such as detection efficiency, angular and spatial resolution.