References

ASTRA

Astrophysics and Space Sciences Transactions

ASTRA

1810-6536

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/astra-7-163-2011

A mobile detector for measurements of the atmospheric muon flux

Mitrica

¹ Brancus

I. M.

¹ Margineanu

¹ Petcu

¹ Dima

¹ Sima

² Haungs

³ Rebel

³ Petre

¹ Toma

¹ Saftoiu

¹ Apostu

Horia Hulubei Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH), Bucharest, P.O.B. MG-6, Romania

Department of Physics, University of Bucharest, P.O.B. MG-11, Romania

Institut für Kernphysik, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology - Campus North, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany

28 04 2011

7 2 163 166

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

This article is available from http://www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/163/2011/astra-7-163-2011.html

The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/163/2011/astra-7-163-2011.pdf

Measurements of the underground atmospheric muon flux are important in order to determine accurately the overburden in mwe (meter water equivalent) of an underground laboratory for appreciating which kind of experiments are feasible for that location. Slanic- Prohava is one of the 7 possible locations for the European large underground experiment LAGUNA (Large Apparatus studying Grand Unification and Neutrino Astrophysics). A mobile device consisting of 2 scintillator plates (≈0.9 m<sup>2</sup>, each) one above the other and measuring in coincidence, was set-up for determining the muon flux. The detector it is installed on a van which facilitates measurements on different positions at the surface or in the underground and it is in operation since autumn 2009. The measurements of muon fluxes presented in this contribution have been performed in the underground salt mine Slanic-Prahova, Romania, where IFIN-HH has built a low radiation level laboratory, and at the surface on different sites of Romania, at different elevations from 0 m a.s.l up to 655 m a.s.l. Based on our measurements we can say that Slanic site is a feasible location for LAGUNA in Unirea salt mine at a water equivalent depth of 600 mwe. The results have been compared with Monte-Carlo simulations performed with the simulation codes CORSIKA and MUSIC.

References 1

Arad, S., Arad, V., Onica, I. et al.: Stability study for a large cavern in salt rock from slanic prahova, ACTA PHYS POL B, 41, 1001–1014, 2010.

Bozdog, H., Elzer, M., Gils, H. et al.: The detector system for measurement of multiple cosmic muons in the central detector of KASCADE, Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A, 465, 455–471, 2001.

Carmona, J., Cebrian, S., Garcia, E. et al.: Neutron background at the Canfranc underground laboratory and its contribution to the IGEX-DM dark matter experiment, Astropart. Phys, 21, 523–533, 2004.

Formaggio, J. and Martoff, C.: Backgrounds to sensitive experiments underground, Ann. Rev. Nucl. Part. S, 54, 361–412, 2004.

Gaisser, T: Semi-analytic approximations for production of atmospheric muons and neutrinos, Astropart. Phys., 16, 285–294, 2002.

GEANT Detector Description and Simulation Tool, Program Library Long Writeup W5013, 1994.

Greisen, K.: The Intensities of the Hard and Soft Components of Cosmic Rays as Functions of Altitude and Zenith Angle, Phys. Rev., 61, 212–221, 1942.

Heck, D., Knapp, J., Capdevielle, J N. et al.: CORSIKA: A Monte Carlo Code to Simulate Extensive Air Showers, Report FZKA, 6019, 1998.

Judge, R. and Nash, W.: The spectrum of muons arriving at large zenith angles, Il Nuovo Cimento, XXXV-4, 1025–1030, 1965.

Kudryavtsev, V A.: Muon simulation codes MUSIC and MUSUN for underground physics, Comput. Phys. Commun., 180, 339–346, 2009.

Rubbia, A.: Underground Neutrino Detectors for Particle and Astroparticle Science: the Giant Liquid Argon Charge Imaging ExpeRiment (GLACIER), J. Phys. Conf. Ser., 171, 2009.

Rubbia, A.: The LAGUNA design study - towards giant liquid based underground detectors for neutrino physics and astrophysics and proton decay searches, Acta Phys. Pol. B, 41, 1727–1732, 2010.

Tonazzo, A.: Neutrino astrophysics and proton decay searches at MEMPHYS, Nucl. Phys. B-Proc. Sup, 168, 363–365, 2007.

Wurm, M., von Feilitzsch, F., Goger-Neff, M. et al.: Low energy neutrino astrophysics with the large liquid-scintillator detector LENA, AIP Conf. Proc., 994, 82–91, 2007.