DIAPHANE: Muon tomography applied to volcanoes, civil engineering, archaelogy

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advancements in muography techniques for imaging and monitoring geological structures, focusing on volcanoes, civil engineering, and archaeology, highlighting the DIAPHANE collaboration's latest results.

Contribution

It presents new muography applications in volcanology, civil engineering, and archaeology, emphasizing real-time monitoring of volcanic inner dynamics and structural imaging advancements.

Findings

Monitoring of Soufrière volcano's dome opacity variations.

Detection of hydrothermal system dynamics through muography.

Application of muography to archaeological site scanning.

Abstract

Muography techniques applied to geological structures greatly improved in the past ten years. Recent applications demonstrate the interest of the method not only to perform structural imaging but also to monitor the dynamics of inner movements like magma ascent inside volcanoes or density variations in hydrothermal systems. Muography time-resolution has been studied thanks to dedicated experiments, e.g. in a water tower tank. This paper presents the activities of the DIAPHANE collaboration between particle- and geo-physicists and the most recent results obtained in the field of volcanology, with a focus on the main target, the Soufri\`ere of Guadeloupe active volcano. Special emphasis is given on the monitoring of the dome's inner volumes opacity variations, that could be inferred to the hydrothermal system dynamics (vaporization of inner liquid water in coincidence with the appearance of new fumaroles at the summit). I also breifly present results obtained in the fields of civil engineering (study of urban underground tunnels) and archaelogy (greek tumulus scanning).