RPC application in muography and specific developments

Abstract

Muography is an imaging technique for large and dense structures as volcanoes or nuclear reactors using atmospheric muons. We applied this technique to the observation of the Puy de Dôme, a volcano 2 km wide close to Clermont-Ferrand, France. The detection is performed with a 1 m × 1 m × 1.80 m telescope made of 4 layers of single gap glass-RPCs operated in avalanche mode. The 1 cm2 pad readout uses the Hardroc2 ASICs. The three data taking campaigns over the last three years showed that a RPC detector can be operated in-situ with good performances. Further developments to decrease the gas and power consumption and to improve the position and timing resolution of the detector are ongoing.