IIHE Invited seminar: Imaging with muons

Abstract:

Cosmic-ray muons, produced in the atmosphere and able to penetrate hundreds of meters of rock, provide a powerful non-invasive probe to image the interior of large and dense objects. Muography exploits both muon attenuation and multiple Coulomb scattering to reconstruct density distributions, with applications ranging from volcanology to archaeology and cargo inspection. This seminar will present the activities of the CP3 muography team, including the development and deployment of muon trackers based on Resistive Plate Chambers, simulation and reconstruction frameworks, and Machine Learning optimization of detector design. Finally, this talk will outline the main challenges of this emerging field, such as low flux and environmental systematics, and discuss future perspectives, including our first steps toward exploiting muons from laser-plasma accelerated electron beams as a complementary imaging source.

Short Bio:

Andrea Giammanco is a researcher of FNRS and the director of the Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology (CP3) in Louvain-la-Neuve. He studied physics in Catania before completing his PhD and his first postdoctoral position at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, to then join CP3 where he spent the past twenty years. His research began in collider physics with the ALEPH experiment at LEP and continued with CMS at the LHC, where he remains active. Since 2017 he has also led the development of muography at CP3, launching a new line of research that applies cosmic-ray muons to imaging applications ranging from volcanology to cultural heritage.