Basic concept

The basic idea is to use cosmic rays (mainly muons) to obtain a radiography of containers to detect dangerous (high Z) material

The Search Project

The project uses a full scale demonstrator at the Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro of INFN  to evaluate with real measurements the potentiality of the technology. The demonstrator is made by a set of two drift chambers (3 x 2 squared m) located on the top and on the bottom of the volume to inspect, respectively.

The detectors measure the cosmic ray trajectory in the corresponding positions and hence they bring information of the deviation angle induced by the crossing of the internal volume. Inserting high Z material (i.e. lead) between the two chambers, and measuring the angular difference between the "top" and the "bottom" track, it is possible to reconstruct an image of the volume content, that is to make a muonic radiography. Other detectors can be used to estimate the  particle momentum to improve the method performance.

The project has been financed by the University of Padova and subsided  by INFN (Sezione di Padova). It is a collaboration between researcher of the University of Padova, Padova INFN, INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnato, University of Genova and University of Brescia.

The results have been published in Nuclear Instrument and Method (doi:10.1016/j.nima.2009.03.017).