How to detect energetic particles?

Energetic particle detectorsEnergetic particle detectors are devices or apparatuses for detecting high-energy (above 109 eV) particles, based on the interaction of particles with matter. Energetic particle detectors are usually divided into two categories: counters and trajectory chambers. Counter: record, analyze the electrical pulse information generated by particles in which, in the high-energy experiments are common multi-filament chamber, drift chamber, scintillation counter, Cherenkov counter, through the radiation counter, electromagnetic quantum of energy and hadron quantum of energy and so on. Multifilament chamber and drift chamber: There are many potential filaments and signal filaments in the multifilament chamber, which are filled with gas, and the working principle is similar to that of the positive ratio counting tube, which can give the position of particles, dE/dx and other information, and has good position resolution. The drift chamber adopts the method of measuring the time of electron drift to the signal filament to locate, thus greatly reducing the number of filaments and electronics lines, and improving the position resolution (up to tens of micrometers). Drift chambers are divided into three categories based on structural and performance characteristics: multi-filament drift chambers, uniform electric field drift chambers and adjustable electric field drift chambers. The newly emerged injection chambers and time projection chambers also have a greater role in high-energy particle physics experiments. The new multi-step avalanche chambers, time expansion chambers and self-bursting flow chambers have also received much attention. Scintillation counter: commonly used are plastic scintillation counters and liquid scintillation counters. It is characterized by easy to make a large area, the charged particle detection efficiency is close to 100%, allowing a high count rate, time resolution is very good, easy to measure the time of flight. Large-area plastic scintillation counter time resolution has reached 0.2 nanoseconds. Cherenkov counter: charged particles moving in a transparent medium, when its speed exceeds the speed of light transmission in the medium, it will produce a weak visible light - Cherenkov radiation light. Its radiation angle is related to the particle velocity, thus providing a method of measuring the speed of charged particles. The working medium can be solid, liquid or gas. It can be divided into three categories according to the structure and mode of operation: threshold type, differential type and optical school formal. The latter two have higher velocity resolution capability. Cherenkov counter is often used to identify the same momentum and mass of particles. Through the radiation counter: high-speed charged particles through the interface of the two media will produce through the radiation, its radiation energy and particle energy is proportional to. In the particle speed is very high, very close to the speed of light, with the time of flight and Cherenkov counter are unable to distinguish the speed to identify particles, and through the radiation counter provides a new way to identify the energy region of high-energy particles. Electromagnetic energy quantifier: High-energy electrons or gamma photons in the medium will produce electromagnetic clustering, whose total energy loss of secondary particles is proportional to the total energy of the incident particles. Therefore, once the total energy loss can be collected to determine the total energy of the particle. Electromagnetic energy quantifier is divided into fully absorbing type such as sodium iodide (thallium), bismuth germanate, lead glass, etc. and sampling type two. The latter consists of a sampling counter overlaid with a lead plate. Sampling counters can be liquid argon ionization chambers, plastic scintillation counters and multifilament chambers. Hadron Quantizer: High-energy hadrons in the medium will produce hadron cluster shooting. The total ionization charge can be collected to determine the total hadron energy, usually using scintillation counters or multi-filament chambers intersected with iron (uranium) plates. Trail chamber: Used to record and analyze the image of the trail produced by the particles. Commonly, there are spark chambers, streamer chambers, cloud chambers and bubble chambers. Spark and Streaming Chambers: They are inflatable chambers and require a high voltage. The movement of ions in a strong electric field produces an "avalanche". The development of the "avalanche" is characterized by the production of streams of light followed by sparks. The formation of light flow time is very short (10 nanoseconds or so), so the flow of light chamber has a better time characteristics, it and the spark chamber have a good spatial resolution (about 200 microns). In addition to photographic display of particle trails, they can also record electrical pulse signals. Small gap plane spark chamber can be obtained tens of picoseconds of time resolution. Cloud chamber and bubble chamber: incident particles produced along the path of the ion group, the formation of condensation centers in the supersaturated steam, droplets (cloud chamber); in the formation of superheated liquids in the center of the vaporization, into bubbles (bubble chamber). Both types of trail chambers are photorecorded. Bubble chambers have good positional resolution (up to a few micrometers) and are used in conjunction with counters as apex detectors to measure short-lived particles, while fast-cycling bubble chambers increase the efficiency of instance recording. The above detectors do not resemble what you are talking about. What you are describing is more like the smaller, simpler Geiger counter: the Geiger counter is based on the ionization of gases by rays. The usual structure of the detector (called "Geiger tube") is a metal tube closed at both ends with insulating material and filled with a thin gas (usually a rare gas doped with halogens, such as helium, neon, argon, etc.), with a wire electrode mounted along the axis of the tube and a voltage slightly lower than the breakdown voltage of the gas inside the tube applied between the wall of the metal tube and the wire electrode. Breakdown voltage of the voltage added between the metal tube wall and the wire electrode is slightly lower than the gas inside the tube. So that in the usual state, the gas inside the tube does not discharge; and when there are high-speed particles shot into the tube, the particle energy to make the gas inside the tube ionization and conductivity, in the filament electrode and the wall of the tube between the rapid gas discharge phenomenon, thus outputting a pulse current signal. By appropriately selecting the voltage applied between the filament and the wall of the tube, the lowest energy of the detected particles, and thus their species, can be selected. Geiger counters can also be used to detect γ-rays, but their sensitivity to detecting high-energy γ-rays is low because the gas density in the Geiger tube is usually small and high-energy γ-rays are often ejected out of the Geiger tube before they are detected. In this case, sodium iodide scintillation counters perform better.