The on‐line computer counter and digitalized spark‐chamber technique

APR 01, 1965

Dr. Lindenbaum describes a particle‐physics experiment performed last year at Brookhaven National Laboratory in which one and a half million events per hour were analyzed with an on‐line computer while the experiment was in progress. The author, a senior physicist at Brookhaven, believes that similar on‐line computer‐counter techniques might usefully be applied to other types of physics experiments.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3047330

S. J. Lindenbaum

In the fall of 1962 at the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron, a remarkable event took place. A highly complex elastic‐scattering experiment involving high‐energy $(7–20 BeV /c)$ protons and pions scattered by a hydrogen target was investigated by a system of several hundred scintillation‐counter hodoscopes covering a large fraction of the solid angle in the investigated angular region. The system was all in fast (a few to 30 nsec) coincidence with complicated‐logic trigger requirements, and it automatically trigger‐selected, compiled, stored, and finally transmitted the data to an on‐line computer. The computer then processed the data automatically and rapidly in real time according to a carefully pre‐programmed analysis, stored the desired results in suitable bins, and transmitted the program‐requested data displays back to the display scopes of the experimental group. Desired physical answers based on cumulative statistics (such as computed cross sections, errors, background values and distribution, displays of counter‐efficiency uniformity, etc.) were also available in detailed print‐out tabular (or, if desired, graphical) form, upon initiation by the experimenters of a simple output routine.

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References

1. S. J. Lindenbaum, in Proceedings of the 1962 Conference on Instrumentation for High Energy Physics, July 16–18, 1962 at CERN, Geneva (North‐Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1963), p. 297;
Nuclear Instr. Methods 20, 297 (1963); https://doi.org/NUIMAL
Proceedings of the Conference on Photon Interactions in the BeV Energy Range, January 26–30, 1963, MIT Laboratories for Nuclear Science, Cambridge, Mass. (unpublished).
2. K. J. Foley, S. J. Lindenbaum, W. A. Love, S. Ozaki, J. J. Russell, and L. C. L. Yuan, Phys. Rev. Letters 10, 376, 543 (1963) https://doi.org/PRLTAO
and K. J. Foley, S. J. Lindenbaum, W. A. Love, S. Ozaki, J. J. Russell, and L. C. L. Yuan, 11, 425, 503 (1963); https://doi.org/PRLTAO , Phys. Rev. Lett.
K. J. Foley, S. J. Lindenbaum, W. A. Love, S. Ozaki, J. J. Russell, and L. C. L. Yuan, Nuclear Instr. Methods 30, 45 (1964).https://doi.org/NUIMAL
3. A. Salam and S. J. Lindenbaum, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Nucleon Structure at Stanford, June 24–27, 1963 (Stanford University Press, 1964) pp. 397 and 125.
4. B. C. Maglic and F. Krienen, in Proceedings of the 1962 Conference on Instrumentation for High Energy Physics, July 16–18, 1962 at CERN, Geneva, (North Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1963) pp. 165 and 168.
5. Proceedings of the CERN Conference on Film‐less Spark Chamber Techniques and Associated Computer Use, March, 1964, CERN Report 64‐30, June 16, 1964 (unpublished).
6. Proceedings of the 1964 International Conference on High Energy Physics, August 5–12, 1964 in Dubna, USSR (unpublished).

More about the authors

S. J. Lindenbaum, Brookhaven National Laboratory.