Desarrollo de Técnicas de Muongrafía para Estudios Densitométricos de Objetos de Importancia Estratégica

Abstract

Muongraphy is a non-destructive survey technique that allows the determination of the internal structure of large natural and artificial structures, such as volcanoes. This is possible by constructing an image based on the differential absorption of the directional flux of atmospheric muons resulting from the interaction of cosmic rays with the atmosphere. This doctoral work is developed with the main purpose of contributing to the advance of muography as a prospecting technique in Geophysics. The work consists of two lines of work, one experimental and one theoretical. The experimental one is based on the development of an astroparticle detector prototype based on plastic scintillators and photomultipliers, using an acquisition electronics developed for the AMIGA project at the Pierre Auger Observatory and plastic scintillator materials. The second line of work deals with the study of the detector and research structures through computer simulations and theoretical models. During the first two years the credits of courses requested by the doctorate were completed. In addition, work was done on the study of the response of electronics, pulses, data analysis techniques and the coupling of photomultipliers with scintillators. Thanks to this, progress was made in the development of the prototype and the possibility of increasing the spatial resolution through synchronous detection between electronics connected to the same scintillator was investigated. Currently we are working on the computer models, we are studying and investigating with respect to the candidates for objects of study, highlighting the Copahue volcano, Peteroa volcano and the possibility of underground measurements.