Cosmic ray muon tomography is a novel technology to detect high-Z material. A prototype of TUMUTY with 73.6 cm x 73.6 cm large scale position sensitive MRPC detectors has been developed and is introduced in this paper. Three test kits have been teste
d and image is reconstructed using MAP algorithm. The reconstruction results show that the prototype is working well and the objects with complex structure and small size (20 mm) can be imaged on it, while the high-Z material is distinguishable from the low-Z one. This prototype provides a good platform for our further studies of the physical characteristics and the performances of cosmic ray muon tomography.
The China Dark Matter Experiment (CDEX) is located at the China Jinping underground laboratory (CJPL) and aims to directly detect the WIMP flux with high sensitivity in the low mass region. Here we present a study of the predicted photon and electron
backgrounds including the background contribution of the structure materials of the germanium detector, the passive shielding materials, and the intrinsic radioactivity of the liquid argon that serves as an anti-Compton active shielding detector. A detailed geometry is modeled and the background contribution has been simulated based on the measured radioactivities of all possible components within the GEANT4 program. Then the photon and electron background level in the energy region of interest (<10^-2 events kg-1 day-1 keV-1 (cpkkd)) is predicted based on Monte Carlo simulations. The simulated result is consistent with the design goal of CDEX-10 experiment, 0.1 cpkkd, which shows that the active and passive shield design of CDEX-10 is effective and feasible.
The elastic properties of rutile transition metal dioxides XO$_{2}$ (X=Ru, Rh, Os, and Ir) are investigated using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory. Elastic constants, bulk modulus, shear modulus, and Youngs modulus as
well as Possion ratio are given. OsO$_2$ and IrO$_2$ show strong incompressibility. The hardness estimated for these dioxides shows that they are not superhard solids. The obtained Debye temperatures are comparative to those of transition metal dinitrides or diborides.
The structural, elastic and electronic properties of ReN are investigated by first-principles calculations based on density functional theory. Two competing structures, i.e., CsCl-like and NiAs-like structures, are found and the most stable structure
, NiAs-like, has a hexagonal symmetry which belongs to space group P63/mmc with a=2.7472 and c=5.8180 AA. ReN with hexagonal symmetry is a metal ultra-incompressible solid and has less elastic anisotropy. The ultra-incompressibility of ReN is attributed to its high valence electron density and strong covalence bondings. Calculations of density of states and charge density distribution, together with Mulliken atomic population analysis, show that the bondings of ReN should be a mixture of metallic, covalent, and ionic bondings. Our results indicate that ReN can be used as a potential ultra-incompressible conductor. In particular, we obtain a superconducting transition temperature T$_c$=4.8 K for ReN.
