The Physics of Particle Detectors

The Physics of Particle Detectors Dan Green Cam bridge U. Press, New York, 2000. $100.00 (361 pp.). ISBN 0-521-6622-5

Particle detectors are essential to a broad range of high energy physics studies, both cosmic and accelerator. Detectors allow us to see such diverse objects as neutrinos from supernovas, decays of mesons containing heavy quarks, and W and Z gauge bosons. Future discoveries such as the putative Higgs boson and crucially important measurements such as charge conjugation–parity (CP) violation in B meson decay will be made with particle detectors. Yet the actual science of the workings of detectors is often ignored; generalized training in detector technology is frequently overlooked. Dan Green’s The Physics of Particle Detectors makes a good effort to present in one volume all the basic ingredients necessary for an elementary understanding of the workings of most detectors used in particle physics.

This book is directed toward graduate students and other researchers in the field of experimental elementary particle physics. Green is a leader in the construction of the CMS detector for the 14-TeV proton–proton Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Detectors such as CMS are combinations of many subdetectors, each one based on a different technology and each having a unique function. Rather than focus on the direct knowledge necessary to construct a particular system, this book examines the fundamental physics behind the interactions of particles with matter and how these interactions can be exploited to reveal some property of the particles—their mass, momentum, or energy, for example.

The Physics of Particle Detectors is full of insights and serves as a useful educational tool. (For example, the fact that nuclear cross-sections scale as the 2/3 power of the atomic number is derived geometrically.) Problems are provided at the end of each chapter; this book could be the basis of a course, in a summer school, for instance. Overviews are given of entire detector systems and a clear distinction is drawn between nondestructive (or essentially nondestructive) measurements and absorption devices that destroy the particles.

The introductory material is done rather intuitively, without rigorous derivation. This approach works, because the author freely declares his tactic and refers us to more rigorous descriptions. Specific sections differ in quality. The sections on transition radiation, magnetic fields, and electromagnetic and hadronic calorimetry are excellent. In these areas the explanations are clear and examples are provided. The basic idea that transition radiation depends on having many crossings of thin media is explained nicely. The discussions of calorimetry are particularly clear. The section on Cherenkov radiation is less well done. Distinctions, in principle, between threshold and ring-imaging devices are lost, and the sources of ring-radius error are not discussed. Several large and innovative RICH (Rich Imaging Cherenkov) systems constructed in the 1990s for the DELPHI, SLD, BABAR and CLEO III experiments are not mentioned, and the reference list is incomplete. Furthermore, some important topics are not covered: scintillating fiber tracking systems and pixel detectors, for example. However, this is to be expected in such an all-encompassing work.

The Physics of Particle Detectors is a welcome companion to other works, including volumes that give more details about specific technologies or provide more rigorous derivations. Among these other works are the companion volume in the Cambridge U. Press Series, Particle Detectors , by Klaus Grupen, (1996); Techniques for Nuclear and Particle Physics Experiments, by William R. Leo (Springer-Verlag, 1994); Introduction to Experimental Particle Physics , by Richard Fernow (Cambridge, U. Press, 1986); Detectors for Particle Radiation, by Konrad Kleinknecht (Cambridge U. Press, 1998); the more specific Particle Detection with Drift Chambers, by Walter Blum and Luigi Rolandi (Springer-Verlag, 1994); and Instrumentation in High Energy Physics , by Fabio Sauli (World Scientific, 1992). In addition, proceedings of various schools and conference series are great resources.

These include the proceedings of the ICFA (International Committee on Future Accelerators) Schools on Instrumentation in Elementary Particle Physics (World Scientific, 1988, edited by C. W. Falbjan and J. E. Pilcher; World Scientific, 1992, edited by J. C. Angus et al.; AIP Press, 1998, edited by G. Herrera Corral and M. Sosa Aquino); and AIP Press, 2000, edited by Sehban Kartal). There are also the “Beauty 1993–2000” series, published in the journal Nuclear Instruments and Methods, the last in volume A446 (2000), and the three conferences on Cherenkov radiation published in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research: (1) “Experimental Techniques of Cherenkov Light Imaging, A343 (1994), edited by Eugenio Nappa and Thomas Ypsilantis; (2) “Techniques and Results of Cherenkov Light Imaging in High Energy Physics,” A371 (1966), edited by Tord Ekelöf; and (3) “Advances in Cherenkov Light Imaging Techniques and Applications,” A488 (1999), edited by Amos Breskin, Rachel Chechik, and Thomas Ypsilantis.