Research and Development of fully automated Nuclear Emulsion read-out system and its applications
Nagoya University Graduate School of Science
*The organization and the title are those when awarded
Abstract
- 日本語
- English
原子核乾板は，放射線の飛跡をサブミクロンの位置精度で三次元的に記録する放射線飛跡検出器である。本研究では，原子核乾板に写った高エネルギーの放射線の飛跡を自動で認識し読み出す装置の開発・実用化を行い，さらにその高速化を推し進めている。開発の主目的は，素粒子物理学の最先端研究での原子核乾板の活用であったが，結果として，火山や原子炉などの大型構造物の内部構造を，その物体を透過してくる宇宙線ミュー粒子をとらえることによって探る，ミュー粒子ラジオグラフィーの分野で大きな役割を果たすことができるものへと発展しつつある。
Nuclear Emulsion is a radiation detector, which has three dimensional position resolution of sub-micron. In this research, research and development of an automated emulsion read-out system has been carrying out in order to realize automatic recognition of straightly aligned grains along high-energy particles recorded three-dimensionally in the Nuclear Emulsion layers. The developed systems have been used in the research of elementary particle physics. Also we tried their application to Muon radiography of volcanoes and nuclear reactor and succeeded to investigate the inner structure of them. This is also the first time in the world.
Research summary
Nuclear Emulsion is a radiation detector which has three dimensional position resolution of sub-micron.
It has high resolution but had not been for practical use due to its too long read-out time.
Dr. Nakano succeeded in developing a practical automated emulsion read-out system in 1994 for the first time in the world.
He continues to accelerate the read-out speed by improving the system structure and image processing technique.
He has achieved the world’s fastest read-out speed, which is about 10000 times faster than that of his first system.
The system is actively contributing to the research in neutrino events.
In the future, it is also expected to apply to the investigation of inner structure of volcano or nuclear reactor.
