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Application of Geant4 simulation in measurement of cosmic-ray muon flux and studies of muon-induced background

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Abstract

The low-level underground laboratory at the Institute of Physics Belgrade is a facility for gamma-ray spectroscopy measurements and for measurements of cosmic-ray muon intensity. Related to the two research subjects, studies of cosmic-ray muon-induced background in gamma spectroscopy are of particular interest. Continuous measurements of cosmic muon intensity at the ground level and underground sites have been carried out by means of plastic scintillation detectors. The detector response, interpretation of the experimental spectra and their calibration were obtained and verified using a Geant4-based simulation. The results of the simulation were used in measurement of muon flux at the surface and shallow underground (25 m w e)—the measured fluxes are (170 ± 6) m−2 s−1 and (44 ± 1) m−2 s−1, respectively. An underground muon detector can operate in coincidence with a high-purity germanium gamma-ray detector, which allows investigations of muon-induced processes in germanium spectrometers. In low-level gamma spectroscopy, neutrons produced by muons in the lead shielding of a germanium detector contribute to the detector background. Simulation of prompt muon-induced background as well as simulation of neutron production by cosmic muons in lead were carried out. Estimated neutron yield in lead is (3.1 ± 0.4) × 10–5 neutrons per g/cm2, per tagged muon. Also the average neutron multiplicity is calculated.

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Data Availability Statement

This manuscript has associated data in a data repository. [Authors’ comment: Data sets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author. Time series of muon flux data are available at http://cosmic.ipb.ac.rs/muon_station/index.html. The simulation code used in this work is publicly available at the zenodo.org data repository, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10005170.]

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge funding provided by the Institute of Physics Belgrade, through the grant by the Ministry for Science, Technological Development and Innovation of the Republic of Serbia. The authors thank the reviewers for valuable suggestions that improved quality of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, Pregrevica 118, Belgrade, 11080, Serbia

    Dejan Joković, Dimitrije Maletić, Aleksandar Dragić, Nikola Veselinović, Mihailo Savić, Vladimir Udovičić, Radomir Banjanac & David Knežević

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  1. Dejan Joković
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  2. Dimitrije Maletić
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  3. Aleksandar Dragić
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Correspondence to Dejan Joković.

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Joković, D., Maletić, D., Dragić, A. et al. Application of Geant4 simulation in measurement of cosmic-ray muon flux and studies of muon-induced background. Eur. Phys. J. Plus 138, 1006 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-023-04639-1

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