Development of stroboscopic muography

Abstract

Abstract.Conventional muon radiography has concentrated on non-destructive studies of stationary objects with relatively long exposure times required to achieve sufficient muon statistics. A muon detection system with real time readings and a high spatial resolution detector, enables the investigation of dynamic processes in a stroboscopic mode, where image frames are synchronized with the phases of the dynamic target. Although the natural cosmic ray muon flux is quite low for imaging a rapid process, repetitive processes can still be studied with high time resolution by integrating a large number of frames synchronized to the process. In this paper we demonstrate the stroboscopic imaging capabilities of cosmic ray muon radiography with scintillation counters and the muon readout module. The dynamics of a chemical and melting process in an electric furnace with a size of 30 m water equivalent in diameter was investigated as an example, and stroboscopic images were obtained for hourly changes, with acquisition frames of 400 h each. The results of these experiments demonstrate the future potential for muon radiography of repetitional process, such as magma flow in a conduit.

Muography as a new tool to study the historic earthquakes recorded in ancient burial mounds

“…The result is a pattern of the contrast in the density distribution inside the objects, which is projected onto a 2-dimensional plane. Muography has been applied to the imaging of the internal structure of volcanoes (Tanaka et al, 2007(Tanaka et al, , 2009(Tanaka et al, , 2014Lesparre et al, 2012;Oláh et al, 2019), cultural heritage sites, including the Giza pyramids (Cheops and Chephren), Egypt, the Prambanan temples, Indonesia, Mount Echia, Italy, and Santa Maria del Fiore, Italy (Alvarez et al, 1970;Hanazato and Tanaka, 2016;Tanaka and Ohshiro, 2016;Morishima et al, 2017;Guardincerri et al, 2018;Cimmino et al 2019), industrial plants (Tanaka, 2013), and other natural (Tanaka et al, 2011;Oláh et al, 2012;Schouten, 2018) and man-made structures (Mahon et al, 2018). Prior works have focused on searching for undiscovered chambers or the total weight of the heritage site.…”

Muography

“…Although there are limitations to the targetable size of the objects that can be imaged by muography, researchers have applied this technique to various scientific targets that include volcanoes [such as Asama, Japan [1][2][3], Satsuma-Iwojima, Japan [4,5], Showa-shinzan, Japan [6], Usu, Japan [7], Unzen, Japan [8], La Sourfiere, France [9,10], Puy de Dome, France [11], Stromboli, Italy [12] and Etna, Italy [13,14]], seismic faults in Japan [15,16], ancient architecture [such as the Egyptian pyramids [17][18][19], and Mt. Echia, Italy [20]], and industrial plants [including electric furnaces [21] and nuclear reactors [22]].…”

Muographic data analysis method for medium-sized rock overburden inspections

“…After analyzing data collected during several months of operation, they concluded that areal density of the pyramid was measured with a precision of 2 % along the muon paths that penetrated over 100 m through limestone in the pyramid. This pioneering experiment was a crucial step that eventually led to recent muographic experiments that explored inside volcanoes (Tanaka et al, 2007(Tanaka et al, , 2008(Tanaka et al, , 2009Lesparre et al, 2012;Cârloganu et al, 2012;Carbone et al, 2013;Kusagaya and Tanaka, 2015a, b), industrial plants (Tanaka, 2013;Ambrosino et al, 2015), seismic faults (Tanaka et al, 2011;Tanaka, 2015), and caves (Caffau et al, 1997;Barnaföldi et al, 2012;Oláh et al, 2012).…”