Cosmic Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory

Abstract

The Cosmic Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is a newly formed, global collaboration dedicated to observing and studying cosmic rays (CR) and cosmic ray ensembles (CRE): groups of a minimum of two CR with a common primary interaction vertex or the same parent particle. The CREDO program embraces testing known CR and CRE scenarios, and preparing to observe unexpected physics, it is also suitable for multi-messenger and multi-mission applications. Perfectly matched to CREDO capabilities, CRE could be formed both within classical models (e.g. as products of photon-photon interactions), and exotic scenarios (e.g. as results of decay of Super Heavy Dark Matter particles), their fronts might be significantly extended in space and time, and they might include cosmic rays of energies spanning the whole cosmic ray energy spectrum. CRE are expected to be partially observable on Earth even if the initiating interaction or process occurs as far as ~1 Gpc away. They would have a footprint composed of at least two extensive air showers with correlated arrival directions and arrival times. Since CRE are mostly expected to be spread over large areas and, because of the expected wide energy range of the contributing particles, CRE detection might only be feasible when using available cosmic ray infrastructure collectively, i.e. as a globally extended network of detectors. Thus, with this review article, the CREDO Collaboration invites the astroparticle physics community to actively join or to contribute to the research dedicated to CRE, and in particular to share any cosmic ray data useful for the specific CRE detection strategies.

Acceleration of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays by local supermassive black hole candidates

“…Time correlation of registered showers was studied at the distances from 100 m to 7000 km, and in some cases evidence for unexpected coincidences have been found, however without any convincing follow-up studies and data taking campaigns, which is hard without a global coordination. Recently the idea of looking for large scale correlations in a general and global way took shape of the Cosmic Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) Collaboration (see, recent review [23]) formalized in September 2019. CREDO is meant to be a multi-technique (different detector types) and doubly open (for both data upload and offering access) infrastructure enabling a global research programs concerning radiation (both cosmic and terrestrial), with a number of multi-messenger, multi-mission and transdisciplinary opportunities.…”

Simulations of Cosmic Ray Ensembles originated nearby the Sun

“…Such variation allow us to set up threshold for identification of the CRE footprint under ideal conditions of total detector efficiency. The obtained results represent a step forward towards optimization of global CRE detection within the CREDO initiative [6].…”

Recognition of Cosmic Ray Images Obtained from CMOS Sensors Used in Mobile Phones by Approximation of Uncertain Class Assignment with Deep Convolutional Neural Network

“…Combining these features makes the mobile phones an ideal framework for creating the global network of radiation detectors coupled to central data storage. This idea underpinned several particle detection initiatives like CRAYFIS [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ], DECO [ 1 , 3 , 20 , 21 ], and CREDO [ 22 , 23 ]. The analysis presented in this paper is based on the CREDO detection data set, as this is currently the largest publicly available data set of particle images obtained with mobile phones.…”