Possible application of compact electronics for multilayer muon high-speed radiography to volcanic cones

H K M Tanaka,I Yokoyama

doi:10.5194/gi-2-263-2013

Abstract

Abstract. Compact data-taking electronics were developed for high-speed multilayer muon radiography in order to minimize operation failure rates. By requiring a linear trajectory within the position sensitive detectors (PSDs), the background (BG) events produced by vertical electromagnetic (EM) showers are effectively reduced. In order to confirm the feasibility of this method, the system comprising four PSD layers was tested by imaging the internal structure of a parasitic cone and the adjacent craterlets formed in the 1910 eruption at the base of the Usu volcano, Hokkaido with a conventional (MURG08) readout system (Kusagaya et al., 2012; Uchida et al., 2009). The new mountain is believed to be a cryptodome since its formation. As knowledge on lava domes is accumulated at various volcanoes, the definition of "cryptodome" is now doubted in its validity. The results of the preliminary 290 h muon radiographic survey revealed that the "cryptodome" is not underlain by any lava mass and that a main craterlet is accompanied by magma intrusions at shallow depths. The former verifies that the new mountain is not a cryptodome but a volcanogenetic mound, and the latter interprets the phreatic explosions forming the craterlets as intrusions of magma into the aquifer. However, a higher data taking failure rate was observed with a software-based MURG08 system when the size of the active area of the detection system was enlarged to improve the detection ability of the system. The newly developed MURG12 is a complete electronics system that can simultaneously process signals from 192 scintillation counters with a data size of 600 kbps ch−1 without operation failure. We anticipate that the observation speed would be further improved by employing MURG12. At the base of the Usu volcano, in the 20th century, four eruptions occurred. Some of them demonstrated three characteristic stages of magma intrusions. First, a magma branch remained at a depth leaving an upheaval of the ground; second, it rose and reached aquifers causing phreatic explosions without extrusions; and third, it reacted with aquifers causing phreatic explosions and further extruded over the ground forming a lava dome. In order to clarify the eruption mechanism of Usu, it is necessary for us to image many parasitic cones. Based on the result of the test measurement, we anticipate that MURG12 would be a strong tool for high-speed muon radiography.

Highlights

Muon radiography was first introduced to volcanology in 2006 at the Asama volcano by Tanaka et al (2007a) and succeeded in imaging displacements of volcanic material within the summit crater (Tanaka et al, 2009a)
In order to confirm the feasibility of this technique, the multiPSD system comprised of four position sensitive detectors (PSDs) and MURG08 modules were used by Kusagaya et al (2012) to image the parasitic cone and the adjacent craterlets formed in the 1910 eruption at the base of the Usu volcano, which is shown in topographic sketch maps in Figs. 4 and 5
In a track reconstruction software, a buffer is allocated in a memory for positioning and timing data that correspond to ∼ 2000 muon tracks. This buffer is rapidly consumed by unprocessed data and eventually the process stops. We found that this parallel processing system could successfully handle four planes, each with 11 X and 11 Y strips, operation failure would occur if the number of channels increased