Laboratorio di Tecniche Sperimentali ( II modulo )
Syllabus ( FIS01 [FTA], III year, 64 hours)
Prof. P.S. Marrocchesi
Interaction of charged radiation with matter (an introduction) :
Cross section and interaction probability. Mean free path. Energy loss by ionization. Bethe-Bloch formula. Range. Bragg peak. Energy straggling and Landau distribution. Energy loss for electrons. Synchrotron and Bremsstrahlung radiation. Critical energy. Radiation length.
Interaction of photons with matter (an introduction) :
Photoelectric, Compton and pair-production cross sections. Electromagnetic showers.
Basic instrumentation and electronics for High-Energy Physics :
Position gas detectors (MWPC, drift chamber, ...) and solid state detectors (Si diode, Si multi-strip detector, ...).
Signal shaping, Ballistic deficit, Series and parallel noise. Degradation of Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR) in a layered amplification system. Detector resolution. Pile-up effects. Baseline restoration. Discriminator. Time-walk. Constant-fraction discriminator. Fast coincidence circuit. Scaler. Analog-to-digital converter (ADC).
Time-to-digital converter (TDC). Basic trigger schemes and simple data acquistiion systems for laboratory use. Dead time.
Data analysis statistical techniques :
Maximum Likelihood (ML); Cramers-Rao inequality and MVB limit: applications to the design of an experiment. Properties of ML estimators. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Covariance matrix. General Chi-squared method.
MonteCarlo basic techniques for the generation of statistical distributions. Acceptance and efficiency for a system of cosmic-ray detectors.
LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS :
Cosmic-ray detection with a scintillator hodoscope; energy loss in thin absorbers; characterization of a SciFi + PMT system; e.m. calorimetry, Rossi curve. Measurement of muon lifetime at rest.
Textbooks :
G.F.Knoll, "Radiation detection and measurement", J. Wiley & Sons
P.W.Nicholson, "Nuclear Electronics", J.Wiley & Sons
A.G.Frodesen et.al. , "Probability and Statistics in Particle Physics", Universitetsforlaget, Bergen
K.Kleinknecht, "Detectors for particle radiation", Cambridge University Press
W.R.Leo, "Techniques for Nuclear and Particle Physics Experiments", Springer-Verlag