PHAS Colloquia

Dancing in the “Muonlight”: an Overview of Muography and Related Developments

by Sadman Shanto (Texas Tech University), Sam Cano (Texas Tech University)

Thursday, 11 March 2021 from to (America/Chicago)
Description
Speaker: Sadman Shanto, Sam Cano (PHAS, Texas Tech University)

Title: Dancing in the “Muonlight”: an Overview of Muography and Related Developments

Abstract: Muons are elementary particles that are created naturally in the Earth’s upper atmosphere from cosmic rays colliding with the nuclei of air molecules. The muon flux reaching the Earth’s surface is about 10,000 muons per minute per square meter, making them the most abundant cosmic ray particle at sea level. These charged particles lose energy mostly through inelastic collisions in materials at a rate that is proportional to the density of the material. Muon tomography (muography) is a technique that uses this fact and the measured muon flux to reconstruct images through the use of a muon telescope. In this talk, we aim to introduce and explore the concept of muography and report on two different prototype muon telescopes developed at the Advanced Particle Detector Laboratory. Further, we plan on sharing some recent developments in related muon detection system studies that are also undertaken by this group. Lastly, we would discuss applications of machine-learning inspired techniques to mitigate instrumentation limitation effects for generating higher fidelity images.

About this work: TTU PHAS Undergraduate Research Team (R. Perez, S. A. Shanto, M. Moosajee, and S. Cano) published their research in "Journal of Undergraduate Reports in Physics". [Ref] In the paper, they report on their continued development of a portable muon telescope with excellent angular resolution capable of imaging large archaeological structures in detail.

[Ref] https://www.spsnational.org/jurp/2020/high-resolution-muography-using-prototype-portable-muon-telescope (also find weblink below)


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https://zoom.us/j/9952917599?pwd=MHdiOFRIRG1kVFJ2a1JjVXczVEVnUT09

Meeting ID: 995 291 7599
Passcode: PHAS

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Material
Organised by Nural Akchurin/ HEP