Mass determination on steeply dipping tracks in Emulsion Block Detectors

Abstract

In the s tudy of part icle t racks in Emuls ion Block Detectors one can frequent ly observe appreciable length of t r a jec to ry even for those t racks which t raverse individual emulsion sheets with a large dip angle. The cus tomary methods for deducing the mass of such particles f rom mult iple Coulomb scattering and range or f rom mult iple Coulomb scat ter ing and grain densi ty give very unreliable results. The failure of obtaining accurate mass values with these methods is due to the small distortions which are introduced into the emulsions during processing. We will show in this paper tha t the effect of such distortions can be complete ly el iminated if ins tead of deducing the Coulomb scat ter ing f rom second co-ordinate differences one makes use of th i rd or higher order differences. In a small sample of pro ton t racks with dip angles between 32 ~ and 520 good mass determinat ions have been made.