Application of MWPC based muography in geophysics, experiments and planning

Muography uses cosmic ray muons to image the inner structure of large
objects like geological formations or artificial buildings.
Cosmic muons have wide energy spectrum, while their slow energy loss is
proportional to the density and length of the traversed rock.
Counting these muons one measures the absorption of the overburden rock,
images its inner density structure and reveals anomalies (eg: ore, caves,
tunnels).
This multidisciplinary technology requires expertise in particle
physics instrumentation, geological knowledge, and industrial design,
to became a novel tool for geophysical surveys.
In the last decade several research groups started on various methods
to develop and demonstrate its practical usability.

The Innovative Gaseous Detector R&D Group in the Wigner RCP in Hungary is
a well-known team of the muography community that focuses on
technological advancement and applications. The group has used this
measurement technique in a number of mining, archaeological, and
speleological investigations. I will present the series of
measurements made for these subsurface applications with the results and
practical experiences of our group.

The success of any measurement is based on the right plan,
especially in muography, where devices are mounted into hardly-accessible
territories while measurements take up to several weeks or months.
Choosing the most suitable muograph type and geometry, and
estimate the required measurement time for expected anomalies are
essential. While in practice it is usually done by experience and educated
guess, for new challenges and complex structure it requires mathematical
modeling and computation, that could even be used to planning for
tomographic inversion series.
I will present the developed model for the direct problem,
verify it with laboratory measurements and underground raw data as well.