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Description
This work presents the design, construction, and field calibration of MuTe 2.1, a portable hodoscope developed at the Universidad Industrial de Santander (Bucaramanga, Colombia) for muography of the Cerro Machín volcano (Tolima, Colombia). The instrument is intended to complement traditional geophysical surveys by providing density-sensitive imaging of the volcano's internal structure.
The detector consists of two parallel scintillator panels, each composed of a 15×15 array of plastic bars with 4 cm pitch, resulting in an active area of 60×60 cm per panel. Each bar is coupled to a wavelength-shifting (WLS) fiber (Saint-Gobain) and a Hamamatsu S13360 SiPM. Readout is performed via a FERS A5202 module (CAEN) connected to a local PC through Ethernet. Data is transmitted to the cloud via a Starlink link, enabling real-time monitoring and remote access during extended field campaigns.
Calibration of the detector was carried out in three stages. First, the open-sky muon flux was measured using two coincidence configurations: adjacent panels (2-fold) and stacked panels (4-fold), yielding approximately 170 and 12 part·m⁻²·s⁻¹, respectively. These measurements were compared with ARTI (CORSIKA) simulations, showing a discrepancy of about 18%. Second, the detector response to matter absorption was characterized by interposing lead slabs of increasing thickness (0.5 to 3 cm) with the panels oriented parallel to the atmosphere. The observed attenuation (~30%) is consistent with simulations performed with MEIGA (Geant4). Third, a test muography was conducted on the mountain range adjacent to the laboratory. The reconstructed topographic profile validates the performance of the hodoscope under real field conditions and confirms the reliability of the simulation and analysis chain.