Advances in the field of cosmic-ray Muography*

Although the study of cosmic-ray muons and the study of the properties of muons have been active fields in physics for many decades, the use of cosmic-ray muons for the study of terrestrial objects has not been widely pursued until recently.  First used by E. P. George in 1955 to measure the ice burden over a tunnel, and subsequently used by Luis Alverez in the 1960s to look for hidden chambers in Khafre’s pyramid at Giza, interest in the technique did not increase until the late 1990s.  Muon tomography or Muography is now a rapidly growing discipline with applications in archaeology, geology/geophysics, mining, civil engineering, industrial inspection, nuclear weapons verification and monitoring, contraband interdiction, and national security/border protection.  Within the past few years concepts to use the technology to monitor cyclones, for use in cosmic time synchronization and metrology and even in global positioning have been developed.

Applications in Muography are more widespread in Japan and Europe, but interest in the field is now growing in the US.

 

In this talk I will explain the basics of the concept and technology, give a brief history, and describe some of the current applications.  I will then describe in detail the Exploring the Great (EGP) mission whose goal is to produce a true, high-resolution (voxel resolution of approximately 1 m³) tomographic image of the Great Pyramid which will cover its entire roughly 3 million m³ volume.  This image will be able to accurate map the known internal structure, provide a better understanding of newly discovered internal structure, be able to discover new voids as small as a few m³ and be able to map out density variations in the structure.  I will cover the motivation for the  EGP mission, its technical approach and give preliminary results from detailed computer modeling of its capabilities.