Speaker
Description
Muon imaging (muography) exploits the natural flux of cosmic-ray muons to probe the internal structure of large or dense objects and has found an increasing amount of applications in areas including geoscience, nuclear safety, homeland security, civil engineering, mining industry and more. To enable muography measurements in logistically challenging environments, we are developing a compact, portable muon tracking system based on gas-tight glass Resistive Plate Chambers (gRPCs). The detector design prioritizes mechanical robustness, operational autonomy, safety, low gas flow or sealed mode operation, and cost-effectiveness, making it suitable for flexible field deployment. The envisaged modular telescope consists of multiple position-sensitive gRPC detector planes with active areas thus far ranging from 16x16 to 30x30 cm², and orthogonal strip readout planes providing 2D hit reconstruction and particle tracking, and should allow flexible telescope configurations tailored to different measurement scenarios.
The performance of the basic detector units has been characterized using cosmic-ray muons, demonstrating stable long-term operation, high detection efficiency, reliable timing performance, and sealed-mode gas stability. These studies provide first good indications of the suitability of the system for muographic applications requiring prolonged autonomous operation under demanding environmental conditions.
In 2025-2026, as part of an ongoing campaign to measure artificially generated muons, the gRPC detectors were deployed at the ELBA laser wake field multi-GeV electron accelerator at ELI Beamlines, where ultra-short, high-power plasma-laser interactions generate a complex and highly transient radiation environment. Initial results from these data-taking periods in very challenging conditions will be briefly presented.