Implementation of muon interaction models in PHITS

We have constructed models for muon interactions (i.e., bremsstrahlung, electron–positron pair production, muon photonuclear interaction, and negative muon capture reaction) and implemented these models in the particle and heavy ion transport code system (PHITS). The PHITS2.86 agrees well with experimental data for the vertical intensities of cosmic-ray muons in water and standard rock. The calculated results for neutron production by muon photonuclear interaction and negative muon capture reaction are in good agreement with measured data, except in the case of lead target. PHITS2.86 can also reproduce the cross-section of radionuclide production by muons passing through a concrete wall very well. These results indicate the applicability of PHITS2.86 to the shielding design of muon facilities in which estimations of attenuation length and induced radioactivity are important.     

Pulsed source of ultra low energy positive muons for near-surface μSR studies

We have produced a pulsed beam of low energy (ultra slow) polarized positive muons (LE-μ⁺) and performed several demonstration muon spin rotation/relaxation (μSR) experiments at ISIS RIKEN-RAL muon facility in UK. The energy of the muons implanted into a sample is tuneable between 0.1 keV and 18 keV. This allows us to use muons as local magnetic microprobes on a nanometre scale. The control over the implantation depth is from several nanometres to hundreds of nanometres depending on the sample density and muon energy. The LE-μ⁺ are produced by two-photon resonant laser ionization of thermal muonium atoms. Currently ∼15 LE-μ⁺/s with 50% spin polarization are transported to the μSR sample position, where they are focused to a small spot with a diameter of only 4 mm. The overall LE-μ⁺ generation efficiency of 3 × 10⁻⁵ is comparable to that obtained when moderating the muon beam to epithermal energies in simple van der Waals bound solids. In contrast to other methods of LE-μ⁺ generation, the implantation of the muons into the sample can be externally triggered with the duration of the LE-μ⁺ pulse being only 7.5 ns. This allows us to measure spin rotation frequencies of up to 40 MHz.     

不同测量条件下μ子源项特征模拟

采用CRY宇宙射线模拟软件包,获取不同测量条件下μ子的特征信息,研究不同条件下宇宙射线中μ子的通量、能谱、角分布等特征规律。研究结果表明:太阳活动极大时会使μ子通量降低;地磁场的影响使得赤道附近的μ子通量比极地地区要小且能谱蓝移;海拔升高则会显著增大μ子通量,但总体能量均值降低。模拟结果与相关实验结果具有很好的一致性。     

宇宙线缪子散射成像模拟与算法研究

本文验证了基于Micromegas探测器的宇宙线缪子散射成像系统进行快速核材料检测的可行性,并对实验室宇宙线缪子成像系统原型进行参数估算。基于Geant4程序开发了用于模拟宇宙线缪子物理过程、传输径迹及Micromegas探测器响应的模拟程序。在模拟数据的基础上,实现并改进了两种主要的宇宙线缪子散射成像算法。根据模拟和成像结果,1 m×1 m成像系统可在10 min内检测到被重元素屏蔽的核材料。10 cm×10 cm成像系统的缪子事例触发率为0.16 s^-1,要获得较为清晰的成像结果,要求探测器位置分辨率达到300 μm,探测器增益为1 000时实际测量事例至少需要20 h。     

Measurements of neutron emission induced by muons stopped in metal deuteride targets

An 80-MeV/c negative muon beam from the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory was used to investigate the stopping of muons inside Pd, Ti, and Y targets saturated with deuterium. Neutron emission from the targets was measured with an array of³He detectors, and in some runs, the temperature of the target was monitored as a function of time, with and without a flux of muons on the target. The neutron rates were also measured for Pd cathodes in an active electrochemical cell similar in design to those used in so-called “cold fusion” experiments, and the electrolyte solution was analyzed for excess tritium. No evidence was found for muon-catalyzed fusion at rates consistent with those claimed in “cold fusion” experiments. Neutron production from catalyzed fusion due to the presence of deuterium in palladium deuteride, PdD_0.7, exposed to muons was determined to be 0.0±0.03 (stat.) ±0.25 (syst.) neutrons per stopped muon.     

A segmented conical electric lens for optimization of the beam spot of the low-energy muon facility at PSI: a Geant4 simulation analysis

The low-energy muon facility at PSI provides nearly fully polarized positive muons with tunable energies in the ke V range to carry out muon spin rotation(LE-μSR)experiments with nanometer depth resolution on thin films,heterostructures, and near-surface regions. The low-energy muon beam is focused and transported to the sample by electrostatic lenses. In order to achieve a minimum beam spot size at the sample position and to enable the steering of the beam in the horizontal and vertical direction, a special electrostatic device has been implemented close to the sample position. It consists of a cylinder at ground potential followed by four conically shaped electrodes,which can be operated at different electric potential. In LE-μSR experiments, an electric field at the sample along the beam direction can be applied to accelerate/decelerate muons to different energies(0.5–30 keV). Additionally, a horizontal or vertical magnetic field can be superimposed for transverse or longitudinal field μSR experiments. The focusing properties of the conical lens in the presence of these additional electric and magnetic fields have been investigated and optimized by Geant4 simulations. Some experimental tests were also performed and show that the simulation well describes the experimental setup.     

A segmented conical electric lens for optimization of the beam spot of the low-energy muon facility at PSI: a Geant4 simulation analysis

The low-energy muon facility at PSI provides nearly fully polarized positive muons with tunable energies in the keV range to carry out muon spin rotation (LE-μSR)experiments with nanometer depth resolution on thin films,heterostructures,and near-surface regions.The low-energy muon beam is focused and transported to the sample by electrostatic lenses.In order to achieve a minimum beam spot size at the sample position and to enable the steering of the beam in the horizontal and vertical direction,a special electrostatic device has been implemented close to the sample position.It consists of a cylinder at ground potential followed by four conically shaped electrodes,which can be operated at different electric potential.In LEμSR experiments,an electric field at the sample along the beam direction can be applied to accelerate/decelerate muons to different energies (0.5-30 keV).Additionally,a horizontal or vertical magnetic field can be superimposed for transverse or longitudinal field μSR experiments.The focusing properties of the conical lens in the presence of these additional electric and magnetic fields have been investigated and optimized by Geant4 simulations.Some experimental tests were also performed and show that the simulation well describes the experimental setup.     

Spin polarization and production rate studies of surface muons in a novel solenoid capture system based on CSNS

A novel surface muon capture system with a large acceptance was proposed based on the China spallation neutron source(CSNS).This system was designed using a superconducting solenoid where a long graphite target was put inside it.Firstly,the spin polarization evolution was studied in a constant uniform magnetic field.As the magnetic field can interact with the spin of the surface muon,both the spin polarization and production rate of the surface muons collected by the new capture system were calculated by the G4beamline.Simulation results showed that the surface muons could still keep a high spin polarization([90%)with different magnetic fields(0–10 T),and the larger magnetic field is,the more surface muons can be captured.Finally,the proton phase space,Courant–Snyder parameters,and intensities of surface muons of different beam fractions were given with magnetic fields of 0 and 5T.The solenoid capture system can focus proton and surface muon beams and collect p?and l?particles.It can also provide an intense energetic positron source.     

Some thoughts on the production of muons for fusion catalysis

For muon-catalyzed fusion to be of practical interest, a very efficient means of producing muons must be found. We describe here some schemes for producing muons that may be more energy efficient than any heretofore proposed. There are, in particular, some potential advantages of creating muons from collisions of high-energy tritons confined in a magnetic mirror configuration. If one could catalyze 200 fusions per muon and employ a uranium blanket that would multiply the neutron energy by a factor of ten, one might produce electricity with an overall plant efficiency (ratio of electric energy produced to nuclear energy released) approaching 30%.     

Experimental validation of material discrimination ability of muon scattering tomography at the TUMUTY facility

Muon scattering tomography is believed to be a promising technique for cargo container inspection, owing to the ability of natural muons to penetrate into dense materials and the absence of artificial radiation. In this work, the material discrimination ability of muon scattering tomography is evaluated based on experiments at the Tsinghua University cosmic ray muon tomography facility,with four materials: flour(as drugs substitute), aluminum,steel, and lead. The features of the different materials could be discriminated with cluster analysis and classifiers based on support vector machine. The overall discrimination precisions for these four materials could reach 70, 95, and 99% with 1-, 5-, and 10-min-long measurement,respectively.     

Space Saving and Power Efficient Readout System for Cosmic-Ray Muon Radiography

Cosmic-ray muon radiography has been used to probe the internal structure of volcanoes. To overcome limitations on constructing an observation station, we developed a small-sized readout system with power consumption low enough to be powered by a small solar-power system. The system can be placed near a volcano and can detect cosmic-ray muons that penetrate the volcano and subsequently generate an angular distribution of the muons. The system can be connected to a PC placed remotely from the station, using a wired or wireless network. The PC can show the angular distribution of the muons on a web browser. We used this system to monitor an actual volcano. The obtained clear image of the volcano indicates that the performance of the readout system is sufficient for cosmic-ray muon radiography.     

Feasibility of the hardware muon trigger track finder processor inCMS

This paper describes a feasibility study for the design of the muon trigger track finder processor in the high-energy physics experiment compact muon solenoid (CMS), planned for 2005, at CERN. It covers the specification, proposed method, and a prototype implementation. Comparison between several other measurement methods and the proposed one are carried out. The task of the processor is to identify muons and measure their transverse momenta and locations within 350 ns. It uses data from almost 200000 detector cells of drift tube muon chambers. The processor searches for muon tracks originating from the Interaction point by joining the track segments provided by the drift tube muon chamber electronics to full tracks. It assigns transverse momentum to each reconstructed track using the track's bend angle     

See inside: The development of a cosmic ray muon imaging system to aid the clean up of the UK’s nuclear waste legacy

In recent years the use of non-intrusive and non-invasive imaging techniques to safely interrogate non-nuclear (industrial) storage vessels or process units has seen a significant increase. The nature of material found within active ‘legacy waste’ storage vessels and other radiation shielded vessels coupled with the distinct lack of access makes representative sampling or visual inspection of the vessel extremely problematic and in some cases impossible. However, until recently, the radiation shielding which is commonplace on all nuclear sites has rendered existing remote non-intrusive imaging techniques useless. This is due to the limiting penetrative power of X-rays and gamma-rays as well as lack of access for other semi-invasive techniques such as electrical and acoustic imaging. Cosmic ray muon based imaging systems have great potential. This is because muons have very high energies (up to 10¹² GeV) and therefore, offer a superior penetrative power which provides a means to ‘peer through’ objects which otherwise would be inaccessible. Such objects may include lead lined silo or vessels as well as various intermediate material transport modules. Because muons only show detectable interactions with high atomic number material they also offer a means to detect the quantity and location of heavy metal elements and their associated compounds. In this work the first attempts at two-dimensional muon attenuation mapping are described. More specifically multiple plane prototype muon detection system has been used to image the resultant attenuation maps for a number of lead phantoms. This opens up possibilities for the collation of muon trajectory data which in turn can be used to track muon events both entering and leaving the object of interest allowing attenuation based image processing. It is believed that future work in this area will serve to significantly improve both the coverage area and the spatial resolution of the system though improved detector technology providing a powerful tool for the rendering of either large or dense objects.     

Design principles for efficient muon production in muon-catalyzed fusion reactors

The two major schemes for a fixed-target muon production system in muon-catalyzed fusion reactors are analyzed and compared using Monte Carlo simulation techniques. Starting with a careful optimization of the pion production target we next consider the complete system where pion conversion losses and muon losses in the target and the pressure vessel are taken into account. A simple but realistic design for the pion-muon converter is introduced. Problems and inefficiencies are identified to provide a basis for future inventions.     

Boiling Detection by Acoustic Analysis Applying Linear Discriminant Function

A new inventive radiation dose monitor, designated as DARWIN (Dose monitoring system Applicable to various Radiations with WIde energy raNges), has been developed for monitoring doses in workspaces and surrounding environments of high energy accelerator facilities. DARWIN is composed of a phoswitch-type scintillation detector, which consists of liquid organic scintillator BC501A coupled with ZnS(Ag) scintillation sheets doped with ⁶Li, and a data acquisition system based on a Digital-Storage-Oscilloscope. Scintillations from the detector induced by thermal and fast neutrons, photons and muons were discriminated by analyzing their waveforms, and their light outputs were directly converted into the corresponding doses by applying the G-function method. Characteristics of DARWIN were studied by both calculation and experiment. The calculated results indicate that DARWIN gives reasonable estimations of doses in most radiation fields. It was found from the experiment that DARWIN has an excellent property of measuring doses from all particles that significantly contribute to the doses in surrounding environments of accelerator facilities—neutron, photon and muon with wide energy ranges. The experimental results also suggested that DARWIN enables us to monitor small fluctuation of neutron dose rates near the background-level owing to its high sensitivity.     

Muon radiography of large industrial structures

To date there have been a few sporadic attempts to exploit the immense penetrating power of cosmic ray muons to radiographically probe the internal structure of very large objects ranging from ancient pyramids to active volcanoes. Recently, application to security problems has been described, but the very low muon flux limits more general use. However muons have potential uses for examining very large industrial structures where long measurement times are acceptable, and such possibilities are being investigated.A cosmic ray telescope and recording system has been constructed and is being employed on simple model systems to validate Monte Carlo predictions, and results obtained so far will be described.     

蒙特卡罗模拟矿石品位仪若干测量特性

矿石品位仪主要利用电子对湮灭效应测量较高原子序数金属的含量多少,影响矿石品位仪测量效果和精度的因素有很多。本文主要利用蒙特卡罗模拟方法分析伽玛探测器安装位置对矿石品位仪测量效果的影响,并比较了Ra-226和Co-60两种伽玛放射源应用到矿石品位仪的测量效果差异。     

Detrapping behavior of tritium trapped via hot atom chemical process in neutron-irradiated ternary lithium oxides

Tritium detrapping behavior in neutron-irradiated ternary lithium oxides was investigated by the comparison of the annihilation of irradiation defects with the tritium release. It was revealed that the annihilation of irradiation defects would consist of two processes; namely the fast and the slow ones. The slow annihilation process has correlation with the tritium release, indicating that E′-center or F⁺-center could act as tritium trapping site, and from its activation energy of each sample, the annihilation of E′-center and F⁺-center could be attributed to the recovery of oxygen via diffusion, triggering the tritium release. Meyer-Neldel plots of these results indicate that the slow annihilation process was governed by the formation entropy of a pair of vacancy and interstitial atom of oxygen. Therefore, the trapped tritium would be detrapped by oxygen recovery to E′-center or F⁺-center, and its kinetics would be determined by the population of oxygen vacancy under thermal equilibrium.     

Silicon-Tungsten Calorimeter for the Forward Direction in the PHENIX Experiment at RHIC

The PHENIX detector at RHIC has been designed to study hadronic and leptonic signatures of the Quark Gluon Plasma in heavy ion collisions and spin dependent structure functions in polarized proton collisions. The baseline detector measures muons in two muon spectrometers located forward and backward of mid-rapidity, and measures hadrons, electrons, and photons in two central spectrometer arms, each of which covers 90$^circ$in azimuth and 0.35 units of rapidity. Further progress requires extending rapidity coverage for hadronic and electromagnetic signatures by upgrading the functionality of the PHENIX muon spectrometers to include photon and jet measurement capabilities. Tungsten calorimeters with silicon pixel readout and fine transverse and longitudinal segmentation are proposed to attain this goal. The use of such a design provides the highest density and finest granularity possible in a calorimeter.     

Photon production through multi-step processes important in nuclear resonance fluorescence experiments

We present calculations describing the production of photons through multi-step processes occurring when a beam of gamma-rays interacts with a macroscopic material. These processes involve the creation of energetic electrons through Compton scattering, photo-absorption and pair production, the subsequent scattering of these electrons, and the creation of energetic photons occurring as these electrons are slowed through Bremsstrahlung emission. Unlike single Compton collisions, during which an energetic photon that is scattered through a large angle loses most of its energy, these multi-step processes result in a sizable flux of energetic photons traveling at large angles relative to an incident photon beam. These multi-step processes are also a key background in experiments that measure nuclear resonance fluorescence by shining photons on a thin foil and observing the spectrum of back-scattered photons. Effective cross sections describing the production of back-scattered photons are presented in a tabular form that allows simple estimates of backgrounds expected in a variety of experiments. Incident photons with energies between 0.5 MeV and 8 MeV are considered. These calculations of effective cross sections may be useful for those designing NRF experiments or systems that detect specific isotopes in well-shielded environments through observation of resonance fluorescence.