The SC Intillat Ion Bubble Chamber

Abstract

An additive has been found which converts liquid propane into a liquid scintillator solution. This solution has been used in a bubble chamber to assoc iate photographed interactions in the chamber with externally developed coincidence pulses. Techniques and applications are discussed. Bubble chambers have proved themselves very capable of recording precise geometrical information concerning high energy interactions involving charged particles. Provided that such particles have ranges of more than a few millimeters in the chamber liquid, their directions of flight over a 4π solid angle, their ranges, and in favorable cases their magnetic curvatures and ionizations may all be determined from measurements of chamber photographs. Secondary interactions, multiple scattering, and knock-on electrons are also in general quite apparent. In so far as one may choose the chamber liquid to be hydrogen, deuterium, helium, hydrocarbon, or one containing heavy nuclei one can in many sorts of experiment also control the entire input to an observed high energy reaction in the chamber. A major chamber limitation is in the time coordinate. A bubble chamber photographs in one, perhaps cluttered, picture everything that occurs over a period of the order of milliseconds, and it can do this at most only a few times a second, more commonly every couple of seconds. Moreover one must decide to expand the chamber and use up the relatively expensive opportunity to photograph before it can be determined whether an interesting particle entered or an interesting interaction occurred in the chamber.