The Time Projection Chamber

OCT 01, 1978

By combining the particle‐identification function in the same detector volume as the tracking and momentum‐measurement functions, this device achieves substantial reduction in overall size.

DOI: 10.1063/1.2994775

Jay N. Marx

David R. Nygren

Progress in experimental high‐energy physics is limited in practice by two complementary aspects: the types of beam particles available with useful intensities and energies, and the characteristics of the detection techniques available for measuring needed information about collisions of interest and their subsequent reaction products. Most impressively, advances in accelerator design over the last three decades have led to an increase in beam energies of nearly three orders of magnitude, and the advent of colliding‐beam machines has brought a comparable increase to the center‐of‐mass energy available. The diversity of useful beam species has now grown to include essentially all known particles with lifetimes greater than $10^{−11} seconds .$

References

1. Detailed discussion of the experimental capabilities needed to confront the predictions of the various models attempting to unify weak and electromagnetic interactions are given in the 1975 PEP Summer Study, LBL‐4800, 1975.
2. S. D. Drell, PHYSICS TODAY, June 1978, page 23.
3. H. D. Bethe, Ann. Physik 5, 325 (1930), https://doi.org/ANPYA2
F. Block, Z. Physik 81, 363 (1933), https://doi.org/ZEPYAA
L. D. Landau, J. Phys. USSR, 8, 201 (1944), https://doi.org/JOPYA6
R. Sternheimer, R. F. Peierls, Phys. Rev. B. 11, 3681 (1971).https://doi.org/ANPYA2
4. A. I. Alikhanov, V. A. Lubimov, G. P. Eliseiev, Proceedings of CERN Symposium on Particle Accelerators and Pion Physics, 1956, pages 87–98.
5. D. R. Nygren, “Proposal to Investigate the Feasibility of a Novel Concept in Particle Detection,” LBL internal report, February 1974.
6. J. Townsend, Electrons in Gases, Hutchinson’s Scientific and Technical Publications, London (1947),
R. W. Crompton, L. G. H. Huxley, The Diffusion and Drift of Electrons in Gases, Wiley, New York (1974).
7. “Proposal for a PEP Facility based on the Time Projection Chamber,” PEP Proposal ♯4, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Riverside, Yale University, 1976. This document contains detailed discussions of many of the ideas discussed in this article. Diffusion in the presence of magnetic fields is discussed in Appendix A6.

More about the Authors

Jay N. Marx. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of the University of California.

David R. Nygren. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of the University of California.