Create real-time, high-resolution imaging of reused smartphone camera sensor anti-proton annihilation

Did you know that camera sensors in your smartphone can unlock antimatter secrets? Aegis collaboration led by the team of Professor Christoph Hugenschmidt of the Research Neutron Source FRM II at the University of Technology Munich (TUM) developed a detector for imagery of points in which antimatter is accompanied by material using modified mobile camera sensors.

The new device, described in a paper published in Science Advances, is able to identify the disappearance of anti-device drives at a resolution of approximately 0.6 micrometers, improving 35x in previous real-time methods.

Eigis and other experiments at CERN antimatter factories such as Alpha and GBAR are tasked with measuring free eruptions of antihydrogens in the Earth’s gravitational field with high accuracy, each using a different technique. Aegis’ approach involves measuring vertical displacement using a device called the Moiré Deflectomater, which generates a horizontal beam of antihydrogen and reveals small deviations in motion, and a detector that records the antihydrogen decimation point.

“For Aegis to work, it requires a detector with very high spatial resolution, and mobile camera sensors have pixels below 1 micrometer,” said Francesco Guatieri, the lead investigator for the paper. “We have integrated 60 camera sensors into the detector to achieve a resolution of 3,840 megapixels, the highest pixel count of any imaging detector to date.

“Previously, photo plates were the only option, but they lacked real-time capabilities. Our solution has been demonstrated for anti-protons and applied directly to anti-hydrogens, combining photo-level resolution, real-time diagnostics, self-calibration, excellent particle collection surfaces, and more all in one device.”

Researchers used commercial optical imaging sensors that had previously been shown to be able to image low-energy positrons in real time at unprecedented resolutions.

“We had to remove the first layer of the sensor. The sensor is made to deal with the highly integrated electronics of mobile phones,” says Guatieri. “This required high levels of electronic design and microengineering.”

An important factor in achieving record resolution was the unexpected factor: crowdsourcing.

“We now see that human intuition outweighs automated methods,” Guatieri adds.

The Aegis team asked colleagues to manually determine the location of the drag annihilation point on each of the over 2,500 detector images. This is a procedure that has proven to be much more accurate and accurate than any algorithm. Only downside: it took up to 10 hours for each co-worker to plow all the disappearing events.

“Extraordinary resolution also allows us to distinguish between different annihilation fragments,” says Ruggero Caravita, a spokesman for Aegis.

By measuring the width of trucks for various extinct products, researchers can investigate whether the trucks are produced by protons or pions.

“The new detectors are a game-changing technique for paving the way for new research into low-energy antiparticle annihilation and observing small changes in antihydrogens caused by gravity,” says Carabita.