DETECTORS

Marc Vincent L. Olap

BS Chemistry 321
What are Detectors?
A device used to detect, track, and/or identify
high-energy particles, such as those produced
by nuclear decay, cosmic radiation, or
reactions in a particle accelerator

Modern detectors are also used as calorimeters
to measure the energy of the detected
radiation.

They may also be used to measure other
attributes such as momentum, spin, charge
etc. of the particles.

Uses of Detectors
Medical diagnostic

Radioactive dating measurement

Measuring radiation background

Measuring the mass, energy, and momentum
of particles created in high energy nuclear
reaction
Description

Detectors designed for modern accelerators

are huge, both in size and in cost.

The term counter is often used instead of
detector, when the detector counts the
particles but does not resolve its energy or
ionization.

Particle detectors usually can also track
ionizing radiation (high energy photons or
even visible light).
 HISTORY
 Before the time of the big particle
accelerators, physicists had used:

Bubble chamber

Wilson cloud chamber (diffusion chamber)

Photographic plates



Bubble Chamber
Ø a ve sse l fille d w ith a
su p e rh e a te d tra n sp a re n t
liq u id ( m o st o fte n liq u id
h yd ro g e n ) u se d to d e te ct
e le ctrica lly ch a rg e d
p a rticle s m o vin g th ro u g h it

ØIt w a s in ve n te d in 1 9 5 2 b y
D o n a ld A . G la se r, fo r w h ich
h e w a s a w a rd e d th e 1 9 6 0
N o b e lPrize in P h ysics
Function and Use
Normally made by filling a large cylinder with a
liquid heated to just below its boiling point.

As particles enter the chamber, a piston
suddenly decreases its pressure, and the
liquid enters into a superheated, metastable
phase.

Charged particles create an ionisation track,
around which the liquid vaporises, forming
microscopic bubbles.


Bubble density around a track is proportional to
a particle's energy loss.

Bubbles grow in size as the chamber expands,
until they are large enough to be seen or
photographed.

Several cameras are mounted around it,
allowing a three-dimensional image of an
event to be captured. Bubble chambers with
resolutions down to a few μm have been
operated.


The entire chamber is subject to a constant
magnetic field, which causes charged
particles to travel in helical paths whose
radius is determined by their charge-to-mass
ratios.

Since the magnitude of the charge of all known
charged, long-lived subatomic particles is the
same as that of an electron, their radius of
curvature must be proportional to their
momentum.

Thus, by measuring their radius of curvature,
their momentum can be determined.
v The first tracks
observed in John Wood's 1.5-
inch (~3.8 cm) liquid
hydrogen bubble chamber, in
1954.
Cloud Chamber

used for detecting particles of ionizing radiation

Charles Thomas Rees Wilson (1869-1959), a
Scottish physicist, is credited with inventing
the cloud chamber

along with Arthur Compton, received the Nobel
Prize for Physics in 1927 for his work on the
cloud chamber

It contains gas that has been supercooled to
just below its usual condensation point.
An energetic particle passing through ionizes
the gas along the particle’s path.
The ions serve as center for condensation of
the supercooled gas.
The track of particle can be seen with the
naked eye and can be photograph.
A magnetic field can be applied to determined
the charges of particles, as well as their
momentum and energy.
v C lo u d ch a m b e r w ith visib le tra cks fro m
io n izin g ra d ia tio n ( sh o rt, th ick : αp
- a rticle s; lo n g ,
th in : βp- a rticle s)
Photographic Plates

Preceded photographic film as a means of
photography.

A light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was
applied to a glass plate.

This form of photographic material largely
faded from the consumer market in the early
years of the 20th century, as more
convenient and less fragile films were
introduced.


However, photographic plates were in wide use
by the professional astronomical community
as late as the 1990s. Such plates respond to
~2% of light received.

Glass plates were far superior to film for
research-quality imaging because they were
extremely stable and less likely to bend or
distort, especially in large-format frames for
wide-field imaging.


 A G FA p h o to g ra fic p la te s,
1880

N e g a tive p la te
Examples and types


Many of the detectors invented and used so far
are ionization detectors (of which gaseous
ionization detectors and semiconductor
detectors are most typical) and scintillation
detectors

Others are completely different principles have
also been applied, like Čerenkov light and
transition radiation.

Commonly used detectors for
Particle and Nuclear Physics
Gaseous ionization detectors


 Ionization chamber


 - the simplest of all gas-filled radiation

detectors, and is used for the detection or
measurement of ionizing radiation


 Ion chamber, showing drift of ions.

 Incident radiation is the dotted line.



  Proportional counter

- a measurement device to count particles
of ionizing radiation and measure their
energy
-
-


 Geiger-Müller tube

 - is the sensing element of a Geiger
counter instrument that can detect a single
particle of ionizing radiation, and typically
produce an audible click for each
  Spark chamber


 - a device used in particle physics for

detecting electrically charged particles


A p ro to n –a n tip ro to n co llisio n re co rd e d
u sin g a sp a rk ch a m b e r a t th e U A 5
exp e rim e n t, a t C E R N
 Solid-state detectors

 Cherenkov detector


 - a particle detector using the mass-

dependent threshold energy of Cherenkov
radiation. This allows a discrimination between
a lighter particle (which does radiate) and a
heavier particle (which does not radiate)

 Scintillation counter

 - sensor, called a scintillator, consists of a
transparent crystal, usually phosphor,
plastic (usually containing anthracene), or
organic liquid (see liquid scintillation
counting) that fluoresces when struck by
ionizing radiation
  Semiconductor detector


 - a device that uses a semiconductor

(usually silicon or germanium) to detect
traversing charged particles or the absorption
of photons


 Transition radiation detector


 - a particle detector using the γ-dependent
threshold of transition radiation in a stratified
material. It contains many layers of materials
with different indices of refraction

 Calorimeters

 - an experimental apparatus that measures
the energy of particles. Most particles enter
the calorimeter and initiate a particle
shower and the particles' energy is
deposited in the calorimeter, collected, and
measured



 The EnD!!!