A portable muon telescope for multidisciplinary applications

Muon tomography or “muography” is an emerging imaging technique that uses cosmogenic muons as the radiation source. Due to its diverse range of applications and the use of natural radiation, muography is being applied across many fields such as geology, archaeology, civil engineering, nuclear reactor monitoring, nuclear waste characterization, underground surveys, etc. Muons can be detected using various detector technologies, among which, resistive plate chambers (RPC) are a very cost effective choice. RPCs are planar detectors which use ionization in a thin gas gap to detect cosmic muons, already used since years in major particle accelerator experiments. We have developed a muon telescope (or “muoscope”) composed of small scale RPCs. The design goal for our muoscope is to be portable and autonomous, in order to take data in places that are not easily accessible. The whole setup is light and compact, such to be easily packed in a car trunk. Individual RPCs are hosted in gas-tight aluminium cases. There is no need for gas bottles, once the chambers are filled. The muoscope can be controlled from a reasonable distance using wireless connection. In this paper we summarize the guiding principles of our project and present some recent developments and future prospects, including a long-term stability study of the resistivity of the semiconductive coating obtained with serigraphy.

A new neutron monitor at the Juan Carlos I Spanish Antarctic Station (Livingston Island-Antarctic Peninsula)

Last January 2019, a new neutron monitor was installed at Juan Carlos I Spanish Antarctic Station (62º 39’ 46’’ S, 60º23’20’’ W, 12 m asl) located in Livingston Island (South Shetland Archipelago) close to the Antarctic Peninsula. The vertical rigidity cut-off for this new station is estimated as 3.52 GV. This new station (ORC) is composed of a BF3-based 3NM64 (ORCA) and 3 bare BF3 counters (ORCB). The neutron monitor is complemented by a muon telescope sharing a common room in a single stack. ORCA and ORCB with the Castilla-La Mancha neutron monitor (CaLMa) are the Spanish contributions to the Neutron Monitor Data Base. Because Juan Carlos I station is a summer station, one minute data is providing once a day during the Antarctic summer. One hour data are sent once a day during Antarctic winter. First measurements and future plans are provided in this work.