Development of a non-destructive depth-selective quantification method for sub-percent carbon contents in steel using negative muon lifetime analysis

Ninomiya, Kazuhiko*; Kubo, Kenya*; Inagaki, Makoto*; Yoshida, Go*; Chiu, I.-H. ; Kudo, Takuto*; Asari, Shunsuke*; Sentoku, Sawako*; Takeshita, Soshi*; Shimomura, Koichiro*; et al.

Scientific Reports (Internet), 14, p.1797_1 - 1797_8, 2024/01

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-52255-5

The amount of C in steel, which is critical in determining its properties, is strongly influenced by steel production technology. We propose a novel method of quantifying the bulk C content in steel non-destructively using muons. This revolutionary method may be used not only in the quality control of steel in production, but also in analyzing precious steel archaeological artifacts. A negatively charged muon forms an atomic system owing to its negative charge, and is finally absorbed into the nucleus or decays to an electron. The lifetimes of muons differ significantly, depending on whether they are trapped by Fe or C atoms, and identifying the elemental content at the muon stoppage position is possible via muon lifetime measurements. The relationship between the muon capture probabilities of C/Fe and the elemental content of C exhibits a good linearity, and the C content in the steel may be quantitatively determined via muon lifetime measurements. Furthermore, by controlling the incident energies of the muons, they may be stopped in each layer of a stacked sample consisting of three types of steel plates with thicknesses of 0.5 mm, and we successfully determined the C contents in the range 0.20 - 1.03 wt% depth-selectively, without sample destruction.

Development of nondestructive elemental analysis system for Hayabusa2 samples using muonic X-rays

Osawa, Takahito; Nagasawa, Shunsaku*; Ninomiya, Kazuhiko*; Takahashi, Tadayuki*; Nakamura, Tomoki*; Wada, Taiga*; Taniguchi, Akihiro*; Umegaki, Izumi*; Kubo, Kenya*; Terada, Kentaro*; et al.

ACS Earth and Space Chemistry (Internet), 7(4), p.699 - 711, 2023/04

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.2c00303

The concentrations of carbon and other major elements in asteroid samples provide very important information on the birth of life on the Earth and the solar-system evolution. Elemental analysis using muonic X-rays is one of the best analytical methods to determine the elemental composition of solid materials, and notably, is the only method to determine the concentration of light elements in bulk samples in a non-destructive manner. We developed a new analysis system using muonic X-rays to measure the concentrations of carbon and other major elements in precious and expectedly tiny samples recovered from the asteroid Ryugu by spacecraft Hayabusa2. Here we report the development process of the system in 4 stages and their system configurations, The analysis system is composed of a stainless-steel analysis chamber, an acrylic glove box for manipulating asteroid samples in a clean environment, and Ge semiconductor detectors arranged to surround the analysis chamber. The performance of the analysis system, including the background level, which is crucial for the measurement, was greatly improved from the first stage to the later ones. Our feasibility study showed that the latest model of our muonic X-ray analysis system is capable of determining the carbon concentration in Hayabusa2's sample model with an uncertainty of less than 10 percent in a 6-day measurement.

Design for detecting recycling muon after muon-catalyzed fusion reaction in solid hydrogen isotope target

Okutsu, Kenichi*; Yamashita, Takuma*; Kino, Yasushi*; Nakashima, Ryota*; Miyashita, Konan*; Yasuda, Kazuhiro*; Okada, Shinji*; Sato, Motoyasu*; Oka, Toshitaka; Kawamura, Naritoshi*; et al.

Fusion Engineering and Design, 170, p.112712_1 - 112712_4, 2021/09

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fusengdes.2021.112712

A muonic molecule which consists of two hydrogen isotope nuclei (deuteron (d) or tritium (t)) and a muon decays immediately via nuclear fusion and the muon will be released as a recycling muon, and start to find another hydrogen isotope nucleus. The reaction cycle continues until the muon ends up its lifetime of 2.2 s. Since the muon does not participate in the nuclear reaction, the reaction is so called a muon catalyzed fusion (CF). The recycling muon has a particular kinetic energy (KE) of the muon molecular orbital when the nuclear reaction occurs. Since the KE is based on the unified atom limit where distance between two nuclei is zero. A precise few-body calculation estimating KE distribution (KED) is also in progress, which could be compared with the experimental results. In the present work, we observed recycling muons after CF reaction.

Dynamical response of transition-edge sensor microcalorimeters to a pulsed charged-particle beam

Okumura, Takuma*; Azuma, Toshiyuki*; Bennet, D. A.*; Caradonna, P.*; Chiu, I.-H.*; Doriese, W. B.*; Durkin, M. S.*; Fowler, J. W.*; Gard, J. D.*; Hashimoto, Tadashi; et al.

IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, 31(5), p.2101704_1 - 2101704_4, 2021/08

https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2021.3067793

A superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) microcalorimeter is an ideal X-ray detector for experiments at accelerator facilities because of good energy resolution and high efficiency. To study the performance of the TES detector with a high-intensity pulsed charged-particle beam, we measured X-ray spectra with a pulsed muon beam at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) in Japan. We found substantial temporal shifts of the X-ray energy correlated with the arrival time of the pulsed muon beam, which was reasonably explained by pulse pileup due to the incidence of energetic particles from the initial pulsed beam.

Deexcitation dynamics of muonic atoms revealed by high-precision spectroscopy of electronic X rays

Okumura, Takuma*; Azuma, Toshiyuki*; Bennet, D. A.*; Caradonna, P.*; Chiu, I. H.*; Doriese, W. B.*; Durkin, M. S.*; Fowler, J. W.*; Gard, J. D.*; Hashimoto, Tadashi; et al.

Physical Review Letters, 127(5), p.053001_1 - 053001_7, 2021/07

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.053001

We observed electronic X rays emitted from muonic iron atoms using a superconducting transition-edge-type sensor microcalorimeter. The energy resolution of 5.2 eV in FWHM allowed us to observe the asymmetric broad profile of the electronic characteristic and X rays together with the hypersatellite X rays around 6 keV. This signature reflects the time-dependent screening of the nuclear charge by the negative muon and the -shell electrons, accompanied by electron side-feeding. Assisted by a simulation, this data clearly reveals the electronic - and -shell hole production and their temporal evolution during the muon cascade process.

Nuclear magnetic field in solids detected with negative-muon spin rotation and relaxation

Sugiyama, Jun*; Umegaki, Izumi*; Nozaki, Hiroshi*; Higemoto, Wataru; Hamada, Koji*; Takeshita, Soshi*; Koda, Akihiro*; Shimomura, Koichiro*; Ninomiya, Kazuhiko*; Kubo, Kenya*

Physical Review Letters, 121(8), p.087202_1 - 087202_5, 2018/08

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.087202

J-PARC decay muon channel construction status

Strasser, P.*; Shimomura, Koichiro*; Koda, Akihiro*; Kawamura, Naritoshi*; Fujimori, Hiroshi*; Makimura, Shunsuke*; Kobayashi, Yasuo*; Nakahara, Kazutaka*; Kato, Mineo*; Takeshita, Soshi*; et al.

Journal of Physics; Conference Series, 225, p.012050_1 - 012050_8, 2010/06

https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/225/1/012050

Birth of an intense pulsed muon source, J-PARC MUSE

Miyake, Yasuhiro*; Shimomura, Koichiro*; Kawamura, Naritoshi*; Strasser, P.*; Makimura, Shunsuke*; Koda, Akihiro*; Fujimori, Hiroshi*; Nakahara, Kazutaka*; Kadono, Ryosuke*; Kato, Mineo*; et al.

Physica B; Condensed Matter, 404(5-7), p.957 - 961, 2009/04

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physb.2008.11.227

The muon science facility (MUSE) is one of the experimental areas of the J-PARC. The MUSE facility is located in the Materials and Life Science Facility (MLF), which is a building integrated to include both neutron and muon science programs. Construction of the MLF building was started at the beginning of 2004, and was recently completed at the end of the 2006 fiscal year. We have been working on the installation of the beamline components, expecting the first muon beam in the autumn of 2008.

Detection of neutron detection of dd-CF experiment at J-PARC MLF

Natori, Hiroaki*; Doiuchi, Shogo*; Ishida, Katsuhiko*; Kino, Yasushi*; Miyake, Yasuhiro*; Miyashita, Konan*; Nakashima, Ryota*; Nagatani, Yukinori*; Nishimura, Shoichiro*; Oka, Toshitaka; et al.

no journal, , 

A muonic molecule which consists of muon and two hydrogen isotope nuclei (deuteron (d) or tritium (t)) decays immediately via nuclear fusion (CF) and the muon will be released as a recycling muon. We attempted to use these muons to develop the scanning muon microscope. In this work, we will report the detection of neutron which emits during the CF reaction.

Observation of released muon using muonic X-ray in dd-CF experiment at J-PARC MLF

Okutsu, Kenichi*; Kino, Yasushi*; Nakashima, Ryota*; Miyashita, Konan*; Yasuda, Kazuhiro*; Yamashita, Takuma*; Okada, Shinji*; Sato, Motoyasu*; Oka, Toshitaka; Kawamura, Naritoshi*; et al.

no journal, , 

Muon catalized fusion (CF) is expected to be a high-quality muon beam source for undestructive measurement and a monoenergetic neutron source. In this work, we discussed how to observe a kinetic energy distribution of a recycling muon emitted after CF reaction.