Particle Detectors

Abstract

The book describes the fundamentals of particle detectors in their different forms as well as their applications, presenting the abundant material as clearly as possible and as deeply as needed for a thorough understanding. The target group for the book are both, students who want to get an introduction or wish to deepen their knowledge on the subject as well as lecturers and researchers who intend to extent their expertise. The book is also suited as a preparation for instrumental work in nuclear, particle and astroparticle physics and in many other fields (addressed in chapter 2). The detection of elementary particles, nuclei and high-energetic electromagnetic radiation, in this book commonly designated as ‘particles’, proceeds through interactions of the particles with matter. A detector records signals originating from the interactions occurring in or near the detector and (in general) feeds them into an electronic data acquisition system. The book describes the various steps in this process, beginning with the relevant interactions with matter, then proceeding to their exploitation for different detector types like tracking detectors, detectors for particle identification, detectors for energy measurements, detectors in astroparticle experiments, and ending with a discussion of signal processing and data acquisition. Besides the introductory and overview chapters (chapters 1 and 2), the book is divided into five subject areas: – fundamentals (chapters 3 to 5), – detection of tracks of charged particles (chapters 6 to 9), – phenomena and methods mainly applied for particle identification (chapters 10 to 14), – energy measurement (accelerator and non-accelerator experiments) (chapters 15, 16), – electronics and data acquisition (chapters 17 and 18). Comprehensive lists of literature, keywords and abbreviations can be found at the end of the book.

Cherenkov radiation: why is it perceived as blue?

“…where α is the fine structure constant, z is the charge of the particle in units of the elementary charge, d is the distance along which radiation is emitted, and θ c the cone angle of emission for a given particle velocity. The total number of photons emitted by a particle in the VIS region between 400 nm and 700 nm is about N opt = 491/cm • d sin 2 θ c [2]. The cone angle θ c has a maximum value in water of around 41.4 • , i.e.…”

“…Either of the two wavelength spectra (or the linear dependence of the frequency power spectrum) is often intuitively related to the bluish color (e.g. [1][2][3]). In the following we exclusively use the power spectrum as function of wavelength.…”

“…Electrons with 1 MeV and 0.250 MeV (which gives a velocity of ≈3/4c, i.e. at threshold) have ranges R = 0.437 cm and R = 0.0637 cm [2]. This means that the path length along which 1 MeV electrons may emit Cherenkov radiation is around 0.37 cm, similarly 3 MeV electrons would radiate along a path of around 1.4 cm.…”

“…In this respect, we investigate the question whether Cherenkov radiation is indeed perceived as blue due to its characteristic spectrum, which is usually stated in a vague though intuitive manner (e.g. [1][2][3]).…”

Coincident detection of Cherenkov light from higher energetic electrons using silicon photomultipliers

“…The number of generated Cherenkov photons within a wavelength interval dλ emitted along some travelled distance dx can be written as [8] dN…”