The large spectrometers

OCT 01, 1978

Mammoth detector systems—tens of thousands of detector wires, thousands of tons of iron—with large solid angles of acceptance are becoming the workhorses of high‐energy physics labs worldwide.

DOI: 10.1063/1.2994773

William J. Willis

The push to investigate ever smaller distances in high‐energy particle experiments requires the measurement of ever smaller cross sections. As a result, increasingly large solid‐angle coverage is required to attain sufficient counting rates. In most of these experiments the composite structure of hadrons is broken up at high energies, leading to very complex reactions. Such an event, with many particles emerging, usually must be observed completely, or nearly so, to yield the data necessary to perform an incisive analysis. This is another reason for a large solid angle of observation. Furthermore, it requires the ability to measure every type of particle: charged and neutral, hadronic and electromagnetic. Because the most interesting events are rare in comparison with other processes of similar appearance, as well as on an absolute scale, our ability to identify particle type turns out to be of great importance.

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More about the Authors

William J. Willis. CERN, Geneva, and Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York.