Introductory Muon Science

Abstract

Muons are unstable elementary particles that are found in space, which can also be produced in particle accelerators to an intensity a billion times greater than that occurring naturally. This book describes the various applications of muons across the spectrum of the sciences and engineering. Scientific research using muons relies both on their basic properties as well as the microscopic interaction between them and surrounding particles such as nuclei, electrons, atoms and molecules. Examples of research that can be carried out using muons include muon catalysis for nuclear fusion, the application of muon spin probes to study microscopic magnetic properties of advanced materials, electron labelling to help in the understanding of electron transfer in proteins, and non-destructive element analysis of the human body. Cosmic ray muons can also be used to study the inner structure of volcanoes.

Advanced muon radiography with compact accelerator system

“…This method is also applicable to solve the problems in industrial machineries, thus contributing a wealth of human life: a) some fault in the part of nuclear reactor can be found; b) static as well as dynamic inside-behaviour of iron blast furnace can be probed to provide an information of the safe and efficient iron production; c) by increasing muon energy furthermore, as predicted in the earlier publication, 1) one can investigate, more precisely and more efficiently compared to the case of cosmic-ray muon use, insider nature of volcano for eruption prediction.…”

“…By using elementary particle called muon (µ + , µ -), because of unique mass, electromagnetic-interacting-nature and radioactive-nature, various scientific researches have been realized. 1) Among them, a radiography method by using muon to explore inner-structure of a large-scale substance attracts a significant attention. There are two types of radiography methods to probe inner-structure of an object, namely a) a transmission method and b) a perturbation method as summarized in Fig.…”

A new method on diagnostics of muons produced by a short pulse laser

“…After that an electron with energy range of 0-51 MeV is produced which have a maximum stopping range around 20 g/cm 2 . The volume of the scintillator is chosen to be 30 cm×30 cm×30 cm.…”

New scheme to trigger fusion in a compact magnetic fusion device by combining muon catalysis and alpha heating effects

“…Studies on µCF in relatively large magnetic devices [41] and detailed investigation on µCF process [42] including fusion devices with magnetic trapping conditions [42,43] enable to propose schemes for energy production plants [42][43][44] . An analytical description can be seen in many works [42,[45][46][47] . The full cycle describing the process is shown in Figure 1 [45] .…”