Thesis

Simulation and reconstruction of cosmic muons for muon tomographic applications.

• Call:

  IDPASC Portugal - PHD Programme 2019

• Academic Year:

  2019 / 2020

• Domain:

  Astroparticle Physics

• Supervisor:

  Lorenzo Cazon

• Co-Supervisor:

  Pedro Assis

• 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. LIP is currently deploying its first prototype in an non active mine in Lousal, to prove the capabllities and sensitivity of the technique. 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)