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A Search for Penetrating Showers from Hydrogen at Sea Level Using a Cloud Chamber

Albert B. Weaver*

  • Department of Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

  • *Now at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
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Phys. Rev. 90, 86 – Published 1 April, 1953

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.90.86

Abstract

The extent to which multiple production of π-mesons takes place in local sea-level penetrating showers was studied with a counter controlled cloud chamber in a magnetic field. The rates at which penetrating showers occur under carbon, aluminum, and lead were determined and a search was made for them under liquid hydrogen. In a total operating time of 626 hours with an average thickness of 2.28 g/cm2 of liquid hydrogen above the chamber, no penetrating showers were found which could have originated in the hydrogen. On the basis of the rates at which such showers occur in heavier materials and the number of them formed in the material of the Dewar while operating with hydrogen, one would have expected to detect a minimum of 6 showers from the hydrogen if the cross section for the production of penetrating showers were the geometric area of the nucleus (taken as 6×10−26 cm2 for hydrogen). It can then be concluded that the majority of sea-level local penetrating showers detected below heavy materials by an apparatus of this kind can be attributed mainly to plural production. From momentum measurements in the magnetic field, the minimum value which can be assigned to the momentum of the incident nucleons which causes the average penetrating shower detected with this apparatus was estimated at 6 B ev/c. It follows that the multiple production of charged mesons in a single nucleon-proton collision at about 6 Bev probably does not occur in more than 15 percent of the cases.

The ratios of the rates at which penetrating showers were detected under C, Al, and Pb were proportional to the geometric area of the nuclei within statistical limits.

An event found in the hydrogen which is very similar in appearance to the μ-meson interaction first observed by Braddick and Hensby is discussed. A photograph of a nuclear collision in lead is described in which very little energy is transferred to the lead nucleus although the incident particle has a momentum estimated to be 40 Bev/c.

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Phys. Rev. 90, 86– Published 1 April, 1953
  • Received 16 December 1952

© 1953 American Physical Society

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