Sub-micron alignment for nuclear emulsion plates using low energy electrons caused by radioactive isotopes

Abstract

Nuclear emulsion plates are employed in three-dimensional charged particle detectors that have sub-micron position resolution over 1 m 2 with no dead space and no dead time. These detectors are suitable for the study of short-lived particle decays, and direct detection of neutrino interactions of all flavors. Typically emulsion plates are used in a stacked structure. Precise alignment between plates is required for physics analysis. The most accurate alignment method is to use tracks passing through the emulsion plates. The accuracy is about 0.2 μ m . However, in an experiment with low track density alignment accuracy decreases to 20 μ m because of plate distortion and it becomes more difficult to perform the analysis. This paper describes a new alignment method between emulsion plates by using trajectories of low energy electrons originating from environmental radioactive isotopes. As a trial emulsion plates were exposed to β -rays and γ -rays from K 40 . The trajectories which passed through emulsion layers were detected by a fully automated emulsion readout system. Using this method, the alignment between emulsion plates is demonstrated to be sub-micron. This method can be applied to many nuclear emulsion experiments. For example, the location of neutrino interaction vertices in the OPERA experiment can benefit from this new technique.