3D Cosmic Ray Muon Tomography from an Underground Tunnel

Elena Guardincerri; Charlotte Rowe; Emily Schultz-Fellenz; Mousumi Roy; Nicolas George; Christopher Morris; Jeffrey Bacon; Matthew Durham; Deborah Morley; Kenie Plaud-Ramos; Daniel Poulson; Diane Baker; Alain Bonneville; Richard Kouzes

doi:10.1007/s00024-017-1526-x

3D Cosmic Ray Muon Tomography from an Underground Tunnel

Elena Guardincerri
, Charlotte Rowe
, Emily Schultz-Fellenz
, Mousumi Roy
, Nicolas George
, Christopher Morris
, Jeffrey Bacon
, Matthew Durham
, Deborah Morley
, Kenie Plaud-Ramos
, Daniel Poulson
, Diane Baker
, Alain Bonneville
, Richard Kouzes

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

50 Scopus citations

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.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2133-2141
Number of pages	9
Journal	Pure and Applied Geophysics
Volume	174
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-017-1526-x
State	Published - May 1 2017
Externally published	Yes

Funding

This work was supported by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) Subsurface Technology and Engineering Research, Development, and Demonstration program and by the Los Alamos National Laboratory Center for Space and Earth Science. We used resources provided by the Open Science Grid (Pordes et al. 2007 ; Sfiligoi et al. 2009 ), which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the DOE Office of Science. We thank Alex Johnson for kindly providing the images in Fig. 4 . This is Los Alamos Publication LA-UR-16-29293.

Keywords

3-D inversion
Cosmic ray muons
density tomography

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10.1007/s00024-017-1526-x

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title = "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.",

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AU - Guardincerri, Elena

AU - Rowe, Charlotte

AU - Schultz-Fellenz, Emily

AU - Roy, Mousumi

AU - George, Nicolas

AU - Morris, Christopher

AU - Bacon, Jeffrey

AU - Durham, Matthew

AU - Morley, Deborah

AU - Plaud-Ramos, Kenie

AU - Poulson, Daniel

AU - Baker, Diane

AU - Bonneville, Alain

AU - Kouzes, Richard

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N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - 3-D inversion

KW - Cosmic ray muons

KW - density tomography

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JO - Pure and Applied Geophysics

JF - Pure and Applied Geophysics

IS - 5

ER -

3D Cosmic Ray Muon Tomography from an Underground Tunnel

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Keywords

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