Muon tomography using micromegas detectors: From Archaeology to nuclear safety applications

Abstract

Abstract Muon tomography, or muography, stands out as a non-invasive technique for the scanning of big objects internal structure. It relies on the measurement of the direction changes or absorption of atmospheric muons when crossing the studied object. For the first case, the trajectory reconstruction of muons upstream and downstream the object, provides information to generate its 3D density map. For bigger objects, a 2D map can be obtained by measuring the absorption for different incident directions. Proposed several decades ago, the performance achieved in particle detectors in the last years, specially in terms of stability, robustness and precision, has enlarged the possible applications of this technique. Bulk Micromegas represent a well-known technology suitable for the construction of muon telescopes based on these detectors. Thus autonomous and portable instruments have been conceived and constructed at Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA), being able to perform measurements in-situ, next to the studied objects. Furthermore, a Geant4-based simulation framework, capable to handle 3D models of the studied objects, is also being implemented to be used as support tool during the feasibility studies and for data analysis and results interpretation.