High-Energy Physics with Hydrogen Bubble Chambers

Abstract

Five years ago, our laboratory undertook to adapt the bubble chamber, newly invented by Glaser, to operation with liquid hydrogen, and in large sizes. It was hoped taht this development would yield important new experimental data when the Bevatron was completed. Accompanying papers by other members of the hydrogen bubble chamber group describe the various chambers built in the five year period and the asociated data-reduction apparatus that is needed for efficient utilization of the chambers. Experiments with the 10-cm chamber have yielded interesting data on the interaction of 300-Mev bremsstrahlung radiation with protons, and have shown that a hydrogen bubble chamber is a convenient neutron spectrometer in the 10- to 25-Mev range, the full width (at half maximum) of the 14-mev neutron line from T + D is 1 Mev. This paper, however, describes only those experiments performed at the Bevatron with chambers of 25 cm and 40 cm.