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Introduction to Muon Spectroscopy

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last_modification Published: Jan 22, 2024
last_modification Last Updated: Jan 22, 2024

What are “Muons”?

Muons are subatomic particles that have spin 1/2, carry one elementary electric charge, and have a mass about 207 times the rest mass of the electron or 1/9th of the rest mass of the proton.

Muons may be though of as “heavy electrons” or “light protons”, and they are generated via nuclear reactions currently at four muon sources around the world.

The ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, is one of them.


What is Muon Spectroscopy?

In a muon experiment, the muons are channelled into beamlines and fired towards the samples that we want to study.

They are implanted into the sample and decay with an average lifetime of 2.2μs, releasing a positron in the direction of the spin of the muon at the time of decay.

The positrons leave the sample and are collected by a positron detector. These detections are used to infer the behaviour of the muons and, with that, study different properties of the sample.

Diagram showing muon implantation, decay, and positron detection

Muon Simulations

One of the main problems in Muon Spectroscopy is knowing where the muon is implanted - where it stops - inside the sample.

The stopping site is influenced by many factors and knowing its location is very useful for the interpretation of muon experiments.

Computer simulations can help with estimating the muon stopping site.


Muon Galaxy tools

Muon Galaxy gives easy access to a set of software tools developed by the Muon Spectroscopy Computational Project (MSCP) for simulating muon science experiments including:


Thank you!

This material is the result of a collaborative work. Thanks to the Galaxy Training Network and all the contributors! Galaxy Training Network Tutorial Content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Funding

These individuals or organisations provided funding support for the development of this resource

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EuroScienceGateway
EuroScienceGateway was funded by the European Union programme Horizon Europe (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-04) under grant agreement number 101057388 and by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee grant number 10038963.