A study of the transport of high energy muons through a soil shield at the tevatron

The transport of high energy muons in a soil shield was studied by making fluence distribution measurements at three different locations following a 600 m thick earth shield. The incident muon beam had a broad momentum spectrum with a mean of about 500 GeV/c. The results are compared with Monte Carlo calculations of muon transport. Agreement between calculations and measurements is generally excellent when the muon beam was incident directly on the earth shield. In another series of measurements, the muons were magnetically deflected downward before impinging on the shield. This greatly reduced the muon fluence at distant locations and somewhat worsened the agreement between the model calculations and the observations, most likely by increasing the relative importance of sources of muons not included in the model. Still, peak values in muon fluence distributions are adequately described by the calculations.