Development of a new automatic nuclear emulsion scanning system, S-UTS, with continuous 3D tomographic image read-out

The previous version of the automatic nuclear emulsion scanning system had a limit on read-out speed of several microscope views per second (views/s). This was due to unavoidable mechanical vibration when microscope stage was stopped to acquire tomographic images along the optical axis in emulsion. To overcome this limit, we succeeded in developing optics synchronized to stage movement so that tomographic images can be acquired without stopping a stage. This new system, S-UTS, is now operative with scanning speed of 50 views/s, or 72 cm2/h, with high efficiency and sub-μm precision. It plays an essential role in the OPERA experiment at CERN.