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UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS Guest
2026-06-11 23:58 |
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2026 Meeting
Section: Nuclear and Elementary Particles Physics
Title:
Mitigation of the radioactive background from muon capture in neutrino and dark matter detectors
Authors:
Sandra TUDURACHE, Ionel LAZANU
Affiliation:
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, POBox MG-11, Magurele-Bucharest
E-mail
sandra.tudurache@s.unibuc.ro
Keywords:
Cosmic muons; negative muon capture; muon–matter interactions; radioactive background; underground detectors; DUNE experiment
Abstract:
The muonic component of cosmic rays, due to its high penetrability through soil and the Earth’s crust, can reach deep underground environments and induce nuclear reactions in rocks, minerals, and detector materials. The secondary particles produced in these interactions constitute an important source of cosmogenic radioactive background in underground neutrino and dark matter experiments.
One important class of such reactions consists of negative muon capture processes. When a negative muon stops in matter, it can be captured by an atom, forming a muonic atom. This unstable system rapidly cascades toward lower atomic levels, where the muon either decays or is captured by the nucleus through the weak interaction. Most of the released energy, of the order of 100 MeV, is carried away by the neutrino, while approximately 15–20 MeV remains as nuclear excitation energy. The excited nucleus subsequently de-excites through the emission of neutrons, charged particles and gamma rays.
In this contribution, the kinematic characteristics and energy distributions of secondary particles emitted in negative muon capture processes are investigated for several nuclei relevant to underground neutrino experiments, dark matter searches, and stainless-steel cryostat materials used in the DUNE experiment. Particular attention is given to muon-induced neutrons, which represent a significant contribution to the radioactive background in rare-event experiments. This study represents a first step toward improving the modeling and mitigation of cosmogenic background sources in underground detectors.
References:
[1] Autran, J.-L., & Munteanu, D. (2024). Interactions of Low-Energy Muons with Silicon: Numerical Simulation of Negative Muon Capture and Prospects for Soft Errors. Journal of Nuclear Engineering, 5(1), 91-110. https://doi.org/10.3390/jne5010007
[2] Kawase, S., Data related to Muon Nuclear Capture, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan
[3] Montanari, D. et al., Development of membrane cryostats for large liquid argon neutrino detectors, IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 101, 012049 (2015).
Acknowledgement:
This work was supported by the Romania- CERN Program, under contract
CERN-RO/CDI/2024-001/25.11.2024
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