3D Cosmic Ray Muon Tomography from an Underground Tunnel

Abstract

We present an underground cosmic ray muon tomographic experiment imaging 3D density of overburden, part of a joint study with differential gravity. Muon data were acquired at four locations within a tunnel beneath Los Alamos, New Mexico, and used in a 3D tomographic inversion to recover the spatial variation in the overlying rock-air interface, and compared with a priori knowledge of the topography. Densities obtained exhibit good agreement with preliminary results of the gravity modeling, which will be presented elsewhere, and are compatible with values reported in the literature. The modeled rock-air interface matches that obtained from LIDAR within 4 m, our resolution, over much of the model volume. This experiment demonstrates the power of cosmic ray muons to image shallow geological targets using underground detectors, whose development as borehole devices will be an important new direction of passive geophysical imaging.

arXiv comment17 pages, 8 figures

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Atmospheric muons as an imaging tool
• The application of muon tomography to the imaging of railway tunnels
• Muon Tracing and Image Reconstruction Algorithms for Cosmic Ray Muon Computed Tomography
• Cosmic muon flux measurement and tunnel overburden structure imaging
• 3D Muographic Inversion in the Exploration of Cavities and Low-density Fractured Zones
• Muon absorption tomography of a lead structure through the use of iterative algorithms
• Optimal CO2 storage management considering safety constraints in multi-stakeholder multi-site CCS projects: a Markov game perspective