Measurement of atmospheric muon angular distribution using a portable setup of liquid scintillator bars

TL;DR

This paper presents a portable liquid scintillator setup for measuring atmospheric muon angular distribution and flux, demonstrating accurate results at sea level and highlighting its potential for widespread cosmic ray studies.

Contribution

The study introduces a compact, portable scintillator-based system capable of precise muon angular and flux measurements, with improved analysis techniques and potential for rapid deployment at various locations.

Findings

Measured vertical muon flux of 66.70 ± 1.50 /m^2/sr/s at Mumbai

Demonstrated setup effectiveness with only 3 scintillator bars for quick measurements

Established muon flux dependence on latitude, altitude, and momentum cut

Abstract

Measurements of cosmogenic particles at various locations and altitudes are becoming increasingly important in view of worldwide interests in rare signals for search of new physics. In this work, we report measurement of muon zenith angle distributions and integrated flux using a portable setup of four one-meter long liquid scintillator bars. Each scintillator bar is read out from both sides via photomultiplier tubes followed by an 8-channel Digitizer. We exploit energy deposition and excellent timing of scintillators to construct two dimensional tracks and hence angles of charged particles. We use liquid scintillators since they have an added advantage of pulse shape discrimination (PSD) which can be used for detecting muon induced particles. The energy deposition, time window of event and PSD cuts are used to reduce the random as well as correlated backgrounds. In addition, we propose three track quality parameters which are applied to obtain a clean muon spectrum. The zenith angle measurement is performed upto $60^\circ$. With our improved analysis, we demonstrate that a setup of 3 bars can also be used for quicker and precise measurements. The vertical muon flux measured is $66.70 \pm 0.36 \pm 1.50$ $/m^2/sr/s$ with $n=2.10 \pm 0.05 \pm 0.25 $ in $\cos^n \theta$ at the location of Mumbai, India ($19^{\circ}$N, $72.9^{\circ}$E) at Sea level with a muon momentum above $255$ MeV/$c$. The muon flux has dependence on various factors, the most prominents are latitudes, altitudes and momentum cut of muon so that portable setup like this can be a boon for such measurements at various locations.