Particle detector
In experimental particle physics, a particle detector is a device used to track and identify high-energy particles, such as produced by nuclear decay, cosmic radiation, or reactions in a particle accelerator. Detectors designed for modern accelerators are huge, both in size and in cost. The notion counter is often used instead of detector, when the detector counts the particles put does not resolve its energy or ionization.
Particle detectors usually can also track ionizing radiation (high energy photons or even visible light). If their main purpose is radiation measurement, they are called radiation detector, but as photons can also be seen as (massless) particles, the term particle detector is still correct.
Contents |
Types of detectors
Modern particle detectors are constructed from several of these types, often arranged similar to the layers of an onion. For an example of how such a detector is arranged, see ATLAS. Each type forms a subsystem of the complete particle detector.
- Cloud chamber, Diffusion chamber
- Bubble chamber
- Photographic plates
- Photomultiplier
- Photodiodes
- Streamer tube
- Cherenkov detector,Aerogel detector
- RICH (Ring Imaging Cherenkov Detector)
- Transition radiation detector
- Gaseous ionization detectors (Ionization chamber, Proportional counter, Geiger-Mueller tube)
- Scintillation counter
- Semiconductor detector
- Spark chamber,Wire chamber
- Drift chamber,Jet chamber
- Multiwire Proportional Chamber (MWPC)
- Straw chamber
- Silicon detector
- Time projection chamber (TPC)
- MicroStrip Gas Chamber (MSGC)
- Calorimeter
- Time of flight detector
