Efficacy of Muon Detection for Solar Flare Early Warning

Canadian Muon WorkshopSt-Émile-de-Suffolk, Québec, Canada

October 17-19, 2011

NRCan DND Carleton U

Project on

Outline

• Motivation• Objective• Why muons• Deliverance• Tools • Perspectives 

Motivation 1/3Extreme space weather is mostly due to such solar disturbances that lead to Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), a large release of charged particles from the Sun. CMEs typically take 2-3 days to reach the Earth where they cause geomagnetic storms. They produce “geomagnetically” induced currents (GICs) in conductors, especially high voltage transmission lines. GICs can cause severe damage to the critical components of the electrical power grid (e.g. during the Quebec blackout of 1989).

Motivation 2/3Many of these critical components do not have spares, can require one year to be manufactured and require significant expertise to be installed. Thus extreme space weather conditions can have severe impacts on Canada’s critical infrastructure (CI). Therefore it is very important to provide sufficient early warning ofan arrival of CME; it would allow CI operators (Hydro One, Hydro Quebec, Telesat, NORAD, etc.) to take protective measures.

Motivation 3/3Unfortunately, today a reliable early warning of CMEs is not available. For example, the NASA ACE satellite can provide some data up to 30 minutes warning but it is not sufficient for CI operators.

Improved warnings of approaching CMEs could be obtained by monitoring muons produced by galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Objective

To improve the protection of Canadian critical infrastructure from solar disturbances using ground-based measurements of cosmic-ray-produced muons.

Why muons 1/3   The cosmic rays are deflected away from the Earth by the magnetic field of CME, therefore a sudden decrease in the flux of muons from a specific direction can indicate that a CME is approaching the Earth.  

Why muons 2/3 Muon detectors respond to higher-energy (50 GeV) cosmic rays than neutron monitors (Munakata et al., 2000), therefore the cosmic ray precursors of large geomagnetic storms might be observed by them much earlier.  

Why muons 3/3 Relativistic muons have relatively long lifetimes (the proper half-life being 2.2 µs) and can reach the ground preserving the incident direction of the initiating primary particles. Therefore one can measure the cosmic rays intensity in various directions with a multi-directional detector at a single location (Okazaki et al., 2008).

Deliverance

Performance requirements for a muon telescope (or network of telescopes)

Assessment of different muon detector systems

To be continued …

Tools: LC precursor

Tools: FOREWARN

As a particular muon detector, one can use Forewarn tracking system constructed in Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) by Armitage et al. (2011). The system is able to track cosmic-ray muons by providing the hit position and the angular distributions in two directions.

Perspectives

The long-term goal is to provide Canadian contribution to the Global Muon Detector Network.

From “Cosmic rays and space situational awareness in Europe” (2008) by F. Jansen & J. Behrens (http://ecrs2008.saske.sk/dvd/s9.07.pdf)

Acknowledgements & ReferencesJ. Armitage, J. Botte, K. Boudjemline, and A. Robichaud (2011). FOREWARN Detector

Conctruction, Report, Department of Physics, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada), August 17, 2011, 12 p.L.I. Dorman (1963) Cosmic Rays Variations and Space Explorations, Nauka, Moscow.A. Fushishita, et al. (2010) Precursors of the Forbush decrease on 2006 December 14 observed with the global muon detector network (GMDN), The Astrophysical Journal, 715, pp. 1239–1247, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/715/2/1239.F. Jansen & J. Behrens (2008) Cosmic rays and space situational awareness in Europe, http://ecrs2008.saske.sk/dvd/s9.07.pdf, 6p.T. Kuwabara, et al. (2004) Geometry of an interplanetary CME on October 29, 2003 deduced from cosmic rays, Geophysical Research Letters 31 (19) L19803, 5p.K. Munakata, J.W. Bieber and S. Yasue, et al. (2000) Precursors of geomagnetic storms observed by the muon detector network, J. Geophys. Res., 105, pp. 27,457–27,468. Y. Okazaki, et al. (2008) Drift Effects and the Cosmic Ray Density Gradient in a Solar Rotation Period: First Observation with the Global Muon Detector Network (GMDN), The Astrophysical Journal, 681, pp. 693–707.M. Rockenbach, et al. (2011) Geomagnetic storm's precursors observed from 2001 to 2007 with the Global Muon Detector Network (GMDN), Geophysical Research Letters, 38, L16108, 4 p., doi:10.1029/2011GL048556. S. Yasue, et al. (2003) Design of a Recording System for a Muon Telescope Using FPGA and VHDL, Proc. 28th Int. Cosmic Ray Conf., Universal Academy Press, 3461.