Speaker
David Mahon
(University of Glasgow)
Description
Cosmic-ray muons are highly penetrative charged particles observed at sea level at a rate of 1 per square cm per min. They interact with matter primarily through Coulomb scattering. These properties are exploited in muon tomography to image objects inside industrial nuclear waste containers. A prototype scintillating-fibre detector has been developed at the University of Glasgow in collaboration with the UK National Nuclear Laboratory. This consists of two tracking modules above and two below the container to be assayed. Each module consists of two orthogonal planes of 2mm-pitch fibres yielding one spacepoint. Per plane, 128 fibres are read out by a Hamamatsu H8500 64-channel MAPMT with two fibres multiplexed onto each pixel. A dedicated mapping scheme has been developed to avoid spacepoint ambiguities and retain the high spatial resolution provided by the fibres. The configuration allows the reconstruction of the incoming and scattered muon trajectories, thus enabling the container content, with respect to atomic number Z, to be determined. A likelihood-based image reconstruction algorithm was developed and tested using a dedicated GEANT4 simulation of the prototype system and detailed modeling of muonic properties. Images reconstructed from this simulation are presented in comparison with preliminary results from data taken on a test setup. The experimental results verify the simulation and show clear discrimination between the low, medium and high-Z materials imaged.
| quote your primary experiment | Glasgow Muon Tomography |
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Primary author
David Mahon
(University of Glasgow)
Co-authors
Anthony Clarkson
(University of Glasgow)
Bryan McKinnon
(University of Glasgow)
Cassie Staines
(National Nuclear Laboratory)
Colin Zimmerman
(National Nuclear Laboratory)
Craig Shearer
(National Nuclear Laboratory)
David Hamilton
(University of Glasgow)
David Ireland
(University of Glasgow)
Guangliang Yang
(University of Glasgow)
Matthias Hoek
(University of Glasgow)
Morgan Murray
(University of Glasgow)
Ralf Kaiser
(University of Glasgow)
Russell Johnstone
(National Nuclear Laboratory)
Scott Lumsden
(University of Glasgow)
Sian Nutbeam-Tuffs
(University of Glasgow)
Tibor Keri
(University of Glasgow)
