Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 27: Muon Detectors

T 27.5: Talk

Tuesday, March 17, 2026, 17:15–17:30, KH 00.023

Simulation of a calorimetric muon detector using liquid organic media for imaging of nuclear materials — •Nicolas Andreas Schwarz, Yan-Jie Schnellbach, and Sarah Friedrich — Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) aims to ensure the exclusively peaceful civilian use of nuclear technology in energy generation and disarmament. Nuclear safeguards are technical measures to support non-proliferation. This contribution presents a conceptual muon detector that could prove itself useful as a safeguard for the purpose of (re-)verification. The energy loss of cosmic muons as charged particles is described by the Bethe-Bloch formula. They belong to minimally ionizing particles (MIPs) and thus the mean energy loss is a function of the momentum alone for given material charge densities in the Bethe region. The proposed detector concept studied in this work is a two-sided hybrid muon detector, that uses a PVT scintillator hodoscope for muon track reconstruction, and a liquid organic TPC for calorimetric energy loss measurement since the muon ionizes the medium, producing drift electrons proportional to the deposited energy. Multiple Coulomb Scattering implies a near Gaussian distribution of scattering angles. Combining both information, simulation-based feasibility studies have been conducted to yield density images and show that a differentiation of heterogeneous materials is possible. The insights gained from this analysis will be further developed to apply them to the context of Spent Nuclear Fuels.

Keywords: Verification; Safeguards; Muography