Thesis

Muon Tomography

• Call:

  IDPASC Portugal - PHD Programme 2017

• Academic Year:

  2017 / 2018

• Domain:

  Experimental Particle Physics

• Supervisor:

  Lorenzo Cazon

• Co-Supervisor:

  Fernando Barao

• Institution:

  Instituto Superior Técnico

• Host Institution:

  Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas

• Abstract:

  Muons are deeply penetrating particles which are naturally present at the Earth's surface, as a consequence of the interaction of cosmic rays with the atmosphere. By measuring the attenuation of the open air flux through different directions, they be used to radiograph, or better said, muograph the interior of large volumes of material, like geological structures like volcanoes or mines to archaeological sites. As alternative, by measuring the incoming and outgoing direction, the scattering of muons can be also used to perform tomographic images of objects. This technique has been already proven to be useful to scanner large cargo containers against nuclear material smuggling, and also has served to observe the core of the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor. Muon Tomography is an applied field born from particle and astroparticle physics, and it is rapidly growing towards civil engineering applications, geotechnics, geophysics, monitoring of materials, homeland security, etc. The detectors used to perform Muon Tomography need to reconstruct the direction of the incoming muon. LIP is leader in tRPC, a high performance detector while maintaining relative low const. Several tRPCs planes, a tRPC Muon Telescope, are capable of reconstruct muon trajectories with mRad precission. The goal of this thesis are: * to create the analysis tools to interpret "transmission" and "scattering" muon tomography data sets from real data, collected by a prototype at LIP. * to created a simulation package for the passage of cosmic ray muons through 3D structures. (and subsequently apply the analysis tools)