Attività del Dipartimento

Colloqui di Fisica

Cosmic-ray muon imaging, or "muography", is an imaging technique that takes advantage of the naturally occurring flux of elementary particles called muons, originating from nuclear interactions in the upper atmosphere. The lifetime and the penetrating power of muons, together with their abundance from cosmic-ray showers, make them excellent tools to estimate the density distribution of either large-scale bodies (up to sizes of the order of kilometers) by measuring their absorption rate, or small-scale objects (sub-meter scales) with very large atomic weight (such as fissile materials) by exploiting Coulomb scattering.
Although the earliest proofs of principle date from more than half a century ago, the latest decade has seen a boom in the variety of applications of muography, including volcanology, archaeology, homeland security, nuclear waste characterization, mineral exploration, and even proposed applications to the study of other bodies of the Solar System.
This talk will introduce the basic physics behind the absorption-based and scattering-based muography techniques, and will review some of the recent results, pointing out the technological choices that are appropriate to different use cases, the complementarity with traditional geoprospecting or remote-sensing techniques, and possible future developments.
 
org: MELONI Davide

Allegati: [Slide]  [Locandina]