What is a Particle Detector?

A particle detector is a piece of scientific equipment which can be used to determine the presence of high energy particles. There are a number of different types of particle detectors in use around the world, ranging from the huge and very sophisticated devices attached to particle accelerators to handheld Geiger counters which are used to check for the presence of radiation. The technology behind particle detectors is constantly being adjusted and refined by the scientific community. The field of physics has the most use for particle detectors, since physicists work with high energy particles on a regular basis. A particle detector can be used in both research and applied physics, for experiments, safety checks, and investigations into the nature of the universe. In addition to detecting particles, the particle detector can also return information about the attributes of the particles. Some particle detectors rely on the ionization caused by high energy particles as they pass ...  more

If we've created particles in a collision in an accelerator, we want to be able to look at them. And that's where particle detectors come in. • Particle detector - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In experimental and applied particle physics and nuclear engineering, a particle detector, also known as a radiation detector, is a device used to detect, track, and/or identify ... • The Detector We are going to study particle tracks that have been seen by an experiment called OPAL, at CERN, near to Geneva. This is one of the four experiments that runs at LEP (the Large ...

If we've created particles in a collision in an accelerator, we want to be able to look at them. And that's where particle detectors come in. We build these at the collision points in an accelerator and use them to identify as much of what was produced in the collision as we can. The principle of a particle detector is simple. It will never “see” a particle directly, but shows where it has travelled, what signature tracks it leaves behind and the effect it has on the detector when it is stopped as it flies out of the collision. Detectors consist of layers of different types of material which are used to either show us the path of a particle as it travels along, or absorb it to make the particle stop. We can identify different types of particles depending on where they stop in the detector, and what their path of travel looks like. It is a bit like a police investigation after a car crash - if we know what particles were produced in the collision, in which direction they flew and how ...  more