Speaker
Dr
Anthony Villano
(University of Minnesota)
Description
Soudan Underground Laboratory houses a large muon veto shield lining the Soudan-II proton decay
experimental cavern. Since the Soudan-II detector has been removed the shield has undergone a
refurbishment which allows detection and tracking of through-going muons in the 30x17x12 m cavern.
Further, this veto shield can be used in conjunction with other experiments housed within its walls.
Particularly interesting is the possible measurement of cavern muons coincident with high-energy
energy neutron detections in the Neutron Multiplicity Meter (NMM), a 4-ton gadolinium-loaded water-Cherenkov
detector situated atop a 20-kiloton lead target. Here we cover the ability of the shield and encapsulated
detectors to achieve coincident timing resolutions of about 1 microsecond via GPS-synchronized absolute
time electronics. In addition, the usage of such technology for constraining muon-neutron correlations
underground is discussed.
Primary authors
Dr
Anthony Villano
(University of Minnesota)
Prof.
Priscilla Cushman
(University of Minnesota)
Dr
Raymond Bunker
(Syracuse University)
