ABSTRACT
The Cosmic Ray Cube is a portable tracking device conceived for outreach activities allowing a direct scientific experience for secondary school students. In the context of the PTOLEMY project, the detector was used to measure the differential muon flux inside the bunker of Monte Soratte, a suitable location at about 50 km north of Rome (Italy). Its simple operation was crucial to finalise the measurements, carried out during the Covid-19 lockdown in a site devoid of scientific equipment. The fine scanning of the differential muon rate highlights the details of the mountain above the bunker providing a map of the thickness of the rock which surrounds the detector. The result shows a muon flux at the Soratte hypogeum of about two orders of magnitude lower than the one observed on the surface. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
ABSTRACT
In the context of the Ptolemy project, the need for a site with a rather low cosmogenic induced background led us to measure the differential muon flux inside the bunker of Monte Soratte, located about 50 km north of Rome (Italy). The measurement was performed with the Cosmic Ray Cube (CRC), a portable tracking device. The simple operation of CRC was crucial to finalise the measurement, as it was carried out in a site devoid of scientific equipment and during the COVID-19 lockdown. The muon flux measured at the Soratte hypogeum is about two orders of magnitude lower than the flux observed on the surface, suggesting the use of the Soratte bunker for hosting astroparticle physics experiments in which a low environmental background is required.