Speaker
Description
Muography (or muon radiography) is an imaging technique that relies on the use of cosmogenic muons as a free and safe radiation source. It can be applied in various fields such as archaeology, civil engineering, geology, nuclear reactor monitoring, nuclear waste characterization, underground surveys, etc. In such applications, sometimes deploying muon detectors is challenging due to logistics, e.g. in a narrow underground tunnel or mine. Therefore, we are developing muon detectors whose design goals include portability, robustness, autonomy, versatility, and safety. Our portable muon detectors (or "muoscopes") are based on Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC), planar detectors that use ionization in a thin gas gap to detect cosmic muons.
At present, we have two fully assembled and operational muoscopes of active area $16 \times 16~cm^2$ and $28 \times 28~cm^2$. Benefiting from the experience gained in building and operating these prototypes, we are proceeding towards the development of an improved muoscope version with more advanced technical layout and readiness. In this presentation we provide the status of our performance studies, and an outline of the direction ahead. We aim at improving the resolution substantially by increasing the number of readout channels, and we are also exploring the option of moving from strips to pixels; as that would imply a large increase in the number of readout channels, we are developing 2D multiplexing algorithms. Moreover, a better gas circulation circuit will be implemented to assure the uniformity of the gas distribution in the chamber.
