Mihailo Savić

Neutrons produced by muons at 25 mwe

The flux of fast neutrons produced by CR muons in lead at the depth of 25 mwe is measured. Lead is a common shielding material and neutrons produced in it in muon interactions are unavoidable background component, even in sensitive deep underground experiments. A low background gamma spectrometer, equipped with high purity Ge detector in coincidence with muon detector is used for this purpose. Neutrons are identified by the structure at 692 KeV in the spectrum of delayed coincidences, caused by the neutron inelastic scattering on Ge-72 isotope. Preliminary result for the fast neutron rate is 3.1(5) × 10−-4n/cm2 · s.

The use of multivariate analysis of the radon variability in the underground laboratory and indoor environment

Abstract The paper presents results of multivariate analysis of variations of radon concentrations in the shallow underground laboratory and a family house, depending on meteorological variables only. All available multivariate classification and regression methods, developed for data analysis in high-energy physics and implemented in the toolkit for multivariate analysis (TMVA) software package in ROOT, are used in the analysis. The result of multivariate regression analysis is a mapped functional behaviour of variations of radon concentration depending on meteorological variables only, which can be used for the evaluation of radon concentration, as well as to help with modelling of variation of radon concentration. The results of analysis of the radon concentration variations in the underground laboratory and real indoor environment, using multivariate methods, demonstrated the potential usefulness of these methods. Multivariate analysis showed that there is a potentially considerable prediction power of variations of indoor radon concentrations based on the knowledge of meteorological variables only. In addition, the online system using the resulting mapped functional behaviour for underground laboratory in the Institute of Physics Belgrade is implemented, and the resulting evaluation of radon concentrations are presented in this paper.

Variations of gamma-ray background in the Belgrade shallow underground low-level laboratory

During the last three years we investigated the variations of background simultaneously in two laboratories, the ground level (GLL) and the underground laboratory. The Forbush-like effect from March 2010 was observed in the GLL using a Ge detector and plastic veto scintillator. The underground plastic scintillator saw the same effect but the coincident veto spectrum did not detect the decrease of cosmic-ray intensity. Using a time series analysis of prominent post-radon lines, a significant radon daily variability was detected in the Ge detector background spectrum, but only in the GLL.

Stopped cosmic-ray muons in plastic scintillators on the surface and at the depth of 25 m.w.e

Cosmic ray muons stopped in 5 cm thick plastic scintillators at surface and at depth of 25 m.w.e are studied. Apart from the stopped muon rate we measured the spectrum of muon decay electrons and the degree of polarization of stopped muons. Preliminary results for the Michel parameter yield values lower than the currently accepted one, while the asymmetry between the numbers of decay positrons registered in the upper and lower hemispheres appear higher than expected on the basis of numerous earlier studies.