LABORATORY OF RADIATION-MATTER INTERACTIONS
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- ROBERTO CALABRESE
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- FIS/01
Training objectives
- The goal of the course is the acquisition of the knowledge of the main radiation-matter interactions and the ability to perform elementary experiments to detect charged particles.
Prerequisites
- Knowledge of elementary algebra, electromagnetism, electronics and data analysis.
Course programme
- Fundamental nuclear processes in radioactive sources. Energy loss for heavy charged particles, Bethe-Bloch formula. Energy loss for electrons and positrons. Bremsstrahlung. Multiple Coulomb scattering. Energy loss distribution: Landau and Vavilov distributions. Photon interactions: photoelectric effect, Compton scattering, pair production. Main characteristics for nuclear physics detectors. Ionization detectors, multiwire proportional chambers, drift chambers. Scintillators, photomultipliers, operation with scintillation detectors. Cherenkov detectors.
The course is organized in frontal lectures (24 hours) and laboratory experiments (36 hours). In the following the course’s topics are reported.
Introduction: fundamental nuclear processes in radioactive sources. Cosmic rays (3 hours).
Energy loss for heavy charged particles, Bethe-Bloch formula (3 hours).
Loss of energy for electrons and positrons. Bremsstrahlung. Multiple Coulomb scattering (2 hours).
Statistical distribution of energy losses: Landau and Vavilov distributions (1.5 hours).
Interactions of photons: photoelectric effect, Compton effect, pairs production (2 hours).
General characteristics of detectors for nuclear physics (1.5 hours).
Ionisation detectors, multi-wire proportional chambers, drift chambers, TPC (3 hours).
Scintillators, photomultipliers, operations with scintillation detectors. Cherenkov detectors (3 hours).
Pulsed signals in nuclear electronics, transmission of signals. Electronics logic for elementary particle physics experiments (3 hours).
Description of the 3 experiments to be performed in the laboratory (2 hours).
Laboratory experiments:
1-measurement of the coincidence curve between two scintillation detectors (12 hours)
2-Measurement of the charge spectrum of a photomultiplier and measurement of the gain (12 hours)
3-Measurement of temporal spectra of two scintillation detectors (12 hours) Didactic methods
- The course is organized as follows:
-frontal lectures on all the course’s topics (24 hours);
-laboratory experiments in the Rad-Mat Interaction laboratory (36 hours). The students will be grouped (typically 3 students per group) to perform the experiments. At the end of the experiment each group has to prepare a report which describe goals, methodology and experimental setup, data taken and related analysis. Learning assessment procedures
- The examination consists in an oral test:
-the course subjects will be discussed, to verify the ability of linking different topics discussed during the lectures;
-the reports about the laboratory experiments will be discussed, to verify the understanding of experimental problems and to verify at which level the learning objectives previously described have been acquired, in particular the ability to perform elementary experiments to detect charged particles.
Final evaluation will be based on the examination and on the laboratory work. Reference texts
- Lecture notes.
Specific topics can be further developed in the following text:
Leo 'Techniques for nuclear and particle physics experiments' Springer-Verlag
