A Compact Muon Telescope for Monitoring Secondary Cosmic Ray Fluxes
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ICAL INSTRUMENTS FOR ECOLOGY, MEDICINE, AND BIOLOGY
A Compact Muon Telescope for Monitoring Secondary Cosmic Ray Fluxes Yu. V. Balabina, B. B. Gvozdevskya, A. V. Germanenkoa, E. A. Mikhalkoa, E. A. Maurcheva,*, and L. I. Shchura a Polar
Geophysical Institute, Apatity, Akademgorodok, 184209 Russia *e-mail: [email protected]
Received March 25, 2020; revised May 19, 2020; accepted June 6, 2020
Abstract—The cosmic ray laboratory of the Polar Geophysical Institute has created a simple and compact telescope with a modular design that is designed to detect ionizing particles in the energy range from 1 MeV to 100 GeV. The telescope consists of two scintillator plates separated by a layer of lead that are located one above the other. The electronic circuit creates a channel for counting the upper detector and a channel of coincidences with the lower one. The area of each detector is 0.25 m2; the average count rate of the upper detector is 3000 pulses/min. DOI: 10.1134/S0020441220060032
INTRODUCTION The standard muon telescope is a massive and expensive device. The area of its detectors exceeds several square meters. As an example, a standard cubic telescope has an area of 4 m2 [1]. Its purpose is the simultaneous measurement of the fluxes of muons that reach the earth’s surface in various directions (measurements are carried out at several zenith and azimuthal angles) and the determination of the anisotropy of cosmic rays. There are more complex instruments, for example, in Yakutsk several muon telescopes are located underground at different depths. They monitor cosmic rays in given energy ranges. The purpose of the developed telescope is to measure the fluxes of energetic particles (primarily muons, but also electrons, positrons and γ-quanta) that arise in the atmosphere from cosmic rays. The device uses a muon detector in a telescopic configuration based on scintillators. The simplicity of the design of the device is due to both the use of readymade modules and the moderate size of the effective area of the detectors. However, the selected size of the detectors is sufficient to provide good measurement accuracy with 5-minute averaging.
scintillator is 500 × 500 × 50 mm (area 0.25 m2). They are installed one above the other at a distance of 50 cm. Between them in the middle is a 10-cm-thick layer of lead composed of standard lead bricks (200 × 100 × 50 mm). The size of the lead layer is 750 × 750 mm. The muon telescope is mounted on a turntable that has three axis of rotation. Using this platform, one can orient the axis of the telescope in any direction within the upper hemisphere. The telescopic placement of the detectors allows one to narrow the solid angle of reception to 45°. The output signals are the output of the upper scintillator and the output of the coincidence circuit of the upper and lower. The upper scintillator detects all charged particles that come from the upper hemisphere, including light particles (electrons and positrons), as well as γ quanta. The lower energy threshold is determined on the b
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