Draft write-up: Lecture 4 Page 1 18/02/2007

Energy Loss of Charged Particles Traversing a Medium

In the previous lecture, when we considered the decay of charged pions in emulsion
material, we saw that the energy loss of charged particles traversing a medium could be
used to identify1 particles and measure their kinetic energy. For example in the case of the
pion decaying to a muon and a neutrino, if one knows how much energy is lost by the
muon per unit length in emulsion, he can deduce from this the kinetic energy of the
muon. This can be done by measuring the muon path length from the instance that the
muon was created up to the point where it stops and decays. Hence, understanding the
mechanism under which charge particles lose energy is very important in experimental
particle physics.

Obviously different particles lose energy in different ways depending if the have charge,
large or small mass, or if they can interact weakly or strongly with matter. In this lecture
we will discuss energy losses suffered by electrons and muons as they traverse a material.

Energy loss by heavy charged particles

This discussion refers to energy loss suffered by heavy charged particles which in practice
includes all charged particles except the lightest of them the electron and positron which
have a mass of 0.511 MeV. Heavy charged particles interact electromagnetically mainly
with the atomic electrons in the medium and transfer energy to them in a process which
results in ionizing the atoms of the medium. Calculating the energy loss using quantum
theory is a fairly complicated process which is beyond the scope of this course. The
correct result form the quantum mechanics calculation is given and discussed at the end.
Here we will compute the energy loss classically. The classical calculation, whose result
is not as accurate as the quantum result, does demonstrate the origin of the main features
and dependencies of the formula.

Figure 1: A heavy charged particle of mass M, charge ze interacts and transfers energy to a stationary
electron located at distance b (impact parameter) from its path.

1
It turns out that from the other properties of the track, as we will see later, they could also tell that this was
indeed a muon and not another partcile.

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We will start by solving the problem of calculating the energy transfer from an ionizing
particle, which moves with velocity v a distance dx ' , to a single stationary electron in a
medium. Note that we actually compute the energy gained by the stationary electron in
the medium due to the movement of the ionizing particle by dx ' during which time the
ionizing particle has a constant velocity v . This is a valid assumption because at the end
we are only interested to compute dE / dx ' (energy transfer per cm) and during the time
dt =dx ' / v the velocity of the particle can be assumed to be constant. Eventually we will
integrate over all the electrons in the medium.

Consider a charged particle with charge ze , energy E LAB and mass M moving along the
z-axis at a distance b from a stationary electron e as shown in Fig. 1. The force on the
stationary electron due to the ionizing particle in spherical and cylindrical coordinates is
given by:

 = ze 2 1
F r = F   F z z
4  0 ∣r t ∣2

Shown in Fig. 1 are the forces on the stationary electron at two different time instances.
Due to the symmetry of the problem the effects due to the z-component of the force
cancel out and one only needs to compute the radial force.

ze 2 1 ze 2 b ze 2 b
F = sin  = =
4   0 ∣r t ∣2
4  0 ∣r t ∣3
4  0  b vt 2 3/ 2
2

From the radial force one can calculate the radial acceleration as:

ze 2 1 b
a =
4   0 m e b vt 2 3/ 2
2

Finally the radial velocity can be calculated by integrating over time:

2 2
ze 1 ∞ b ze 1 2
V = ∫
4   0 m e −∞ b vt  
2 2 3/ 2
dt =
4  0 m e vb

The energy gained by the stationary electron can be calculated using the classical formula
for the kinetic energy:

1 z2 e4 1 1
E = m e V 2 =
2 8  2 02 m e v 2 b 2

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The integration over all the electrons in the medium is done by considering the
elementary volume shown in Fig. 2. The ionizing particle is at the centre at distance b
from a given electron in the medium. The elementary volume is given by:

dV = 2 b db dx '

NA
and the number of electrons per unit volume is given by: Z × × where
A
Z , N A , A ,  are the atomic number, the Avogadro number, the mass number and the
density of the medium. Hence the number of electrons is given by:

NA
dn = 2 b db dx ' × Z × ×
A

Figure 2: Elementary volume over which we integrate to sum the energy loss due to all electrons in the
medium.

b max
dE z2 e4 1 1 N b db
dx '
=
8  0 m e v
2 2 2
× 2 × Z × A ×  ×
A
∫ b2
⇒
b min

dE
dx
=
z2 e4 1 1
4  0 m e v
2 2
N
Z A
A  [ b
ln b ] b max
min

where x= x ' and is given in units of g / cm2 .

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To compute the minimum and the maximum impact parameters we use the energy
formula:

1 2 z2 e4 1 1 z e2 1 1
E = me V  = ⇒ b max ; min =
2 8  2 02 m e v 2 b 2 2 0 v  2 me  E min ; max

Hence,

dE
dx
=
z2 e4 1 1
8  0 m e v
2 2
N
A
E
 
Z A ln  max 
E min

However, the maximum energy transferred to the electron is given by:

2 2
2 me  
E max = 2
2 m e E LAB me
1 2
 2
M M

(the proof of this formula is left as a homework). Hence the energy loss formula is given
by:

dE
dx
=
z2 e4 1 1
8  02 me v 2
Z
NA
A  
ln
2 m e 2
E min 1−2 


The minimum energy E min is taken to be the minimum energy required to ionize an atom
of the medium, the ionization potential, and of course it depends upon the type of the
medium.

Having shown the basic features of the energy loss formula we are now ready to present
the exact quantum result which is the well known Bethe-Bloch formula.

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The Bethe-Bloch formula:

The exact quantum mechanical result for the energy loss suffered by massive, charged
penetrating particles is given by the Bethe-Bloch equation:

[ ] [ ]
2 2 2
dE Z 1 2 me c    Z 1 T 
− = K z2 ln −2− = K z2 ln max −2 −
dx A 2
I 2 A 2
I 2

where:

K 4  N A r 2e m e c 2 −1
= 0.307 MeV g cm if A = 1 g mol and N A , r e , m e
−1 2
1) =
A A
are the Avogadro number, the classical radius of the electron and the electron mass.
The variable x is measured in g/cm2 for reasons that will become apparent later.
2) T max is the maximum energy which can be imparted to a free electron in a single
collision.
3)  ,  are the well known relativistic quantities, z is the charge of the incident particle
and Z is the atomic number of the medium.
4) I is the ionisation potential usually taken to be I = 10× Z eV  .
5) Finally  is the density correction term that will be discussed later.

Fig. 3 shows a plot of the Bethe-Bloch formula computed for positive muons (mass =
105.7 MeV) penetrating copper. By inspecting the Bethe-Block formula and Fig. 1 one
can see that:

a) The ionization energy loss does not depend upon the mass of the ionizing particle.
Z
b) There is only a weak dependence on the medium because ≃ 0.5 for most
A
materials. This can also be seen in Fig. 4 where the energy loss has been plotted for
various types of materials and ionizing particles.
c) The energy loss depends only on  and one needs the mass of the particle to convert
it to momentum.

The Bethe-Block equation dictates that the energy loss increases as ~ −2 as the
particle speed decreases. This effect is also shown in Fig. 3. This means that slow
particles will be more ionizing than fast particles. As the particle speed increases the
energy loss reaches a minimum of about 1.5 – 2.0 MeV cm2/g and remains at this revel
for almost the entire range of muon momenta one would observe in a high energy physics
experiment. Hence, the concept of minimum ionizing particle, which is used in high
energy physics to refer to particles whose speed is in this regime and suffer similar energy
losses (1.5 – 2.0 MeV cm2/g). After that is starts rising following the so called relativistic
rise. However radiative effects are also important in this region.

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The relativistic rise comes from the fact that the electric field of the ionizing particle in
the lab frame is proportional to the relativistic gamma (coming from Lorenz transforming
the electric field from the particle to the lab frame). Hence, the faster the particle is, the
stronger the field becomes and therefore the particle can ionize atoms at larger distances
and loses more energy. The rise of the energy loss is logarithmic as can be seen by:

2 m e c 2 2  2 2 me c 2
ln ~ ln ln 2  2  ~ ln  P / M 
I I

Eventually the medium polarizes and cancels this effect. This prevents the energy loss
from rising perpetually and eventually flattens at very high particle speeds. This is the
origin of the density correction term,  , in the Bethe-Bloch equation.

Figure 3: Energy loss of muons in copper. The y-axis is given in units of MeV cm2 /g so that one can
multiply by the density of any material and compute the energy loss in MeV/cm. The energy loss depends
on the relativistic quantity βγ which can be converted to momentum, as it is done here for muons, if one
has identified the particle and knows its mass.

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Figure 4: Energy loss in various types of material computed calculated for muons, pions and protons.
From the classical proof of the ionization energy loss shown earlier the reader may have
realized the reasons for expressing the energy loss in MeV cm2/g. As we said the energy
loss, expressed in units of MeV cm2/g, depends very weakly on the type of medium.
However, to convert it to MeV/cm one has to take in to account how dense the material is
because the Bethe-Bloch formula is given normalized to unit density. In other words a
factor of density is missing which accounts for the number of electrons per unit volume
for a given material. Hence in practice, although Fig. 3 refers to muons in copper, one can
use it to compute energy loss in any other material by multiplying with the density of the
material.

Here is how one would use Fig. 3 or the Bethe-Bloch formula to calculate ionization
energy loss.

Example 1: Consider a pion beam with kinetic energy 80 MeV going through carbon.
Compute the energy loss per cm and the thickness of carbon required to stop them. The
carbon density is 2.265 g/cm3.

Solution:

KE = E− M ⇒ 80 MeV = E−140 MeV ⇒ E = 220 MeV ⇒

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p =  E 2− M 2 = 170 MeV / c =   = p / M = 1.21

One can now use the Bethe-Block formula (or Fig. 3 which is easier) to show that:
2
dE cm
 =1.21 = 2 MeV
dx g
Hence,
2
E g cm MeV
= 2.265 3 × 2 MeV = 4.5
x cm g cm

and with 80 MeV / 4.5 MeV / cm ≃18 cm of carbon one can stop the beam pions from
going through. As we will see next this is only approximately true due to the fact the the
energy loss follows the Landau distribution.

The Landau Distribution

The ionisation energy loss is in principle a stochastic process and one should note that the
Bethe-Bloch equation describes only the average energy loss. If one shoots single charged
particles on a material he will observe that the energy loss follows the Landau distribution
where the most probable value is far lower than the average predicted by the Bethe Bloch
equation.

Figure 5: The Landau distribution which describes the energy loss for a single particle as a function of the
energy loss normalized to the thickness of the material (in this case silicone).  represents the energy loss
and x is the thickness of the material.

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Charged Particle Identification using Energy Loss

The ionisation energy loss is often used to identify charged particles. If the particle
momentum can be measured accurately then by binning the data in bins of fixed
momentum we have that the ionization energy loss depends on the particle mass. Hence,
by measuring dE / dx and the momentum we can identify particles relatively well as
shown in Fig. 6.

Figure 6: At fixed momentum the energy loss of charged particles depends upon their mass and it can be
used to identify particles. The first two bands at low momentum correspond to muons and pions and the
other two are for kaons and protons. A fifth band is barely seen and corresponds to D mesons which
heavier than then proton. The band that is flat in momentum is the electron band.

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Multiple Coulomb Scattering

Charged particles of moderate mass traversing a medium, apart from loosing energy to
the electrons in the medium, interact also with the nuclei in the medium. They cannot
transfer energy to them because the nuclei are much heavier than the electrons and the
energy transfer, as we have seen, is inversely proportional to the target mass. However,
they do ‘feel’ the Coulomb field of the nuclei and because the nuclei are a lot heavier than
them they scatter transversely in the field of the nuclei. The elementary process for one
such a scatter is well known and it is described by the Rutherford formula. However, one
has to take in to account that a charged particle moving in a medium will undergo a large
number of collisions in a process which is stochastic in nature and it is called Multiple
Coulomb Scattering.

From the experimental physic point of view one needs to be able to compute how much a
charge particle beam is going to diffuse when it goes through a medium. Clearly, due to
this effect, one expects that even a pencil beam of infinitely small cross section passing
through a medium of some thickness, will diffuse. At the exit point its spacial distribution
will be Gaussian due to the stochastic nature of the scatters but it will have non-Gaussian
tails due to the Rutherford formula as shown in Fig. 7.

Figure 7: A particle beam passing a material of length L undergoes multiple Coulomb scattering and at
the exit point the particles of the beam follow a Gaussian distribution with non-Gaussian tails.
It turns out that he RMS of the angular distribution in space is given by the formula:

2 z Es 2 dL
 RMS  =  ×
p X0

where z is the charged particle charge number, E s = 21 MeV , p ,  are the momentum
and the relativistic velocity of the particle, dL is the elementary length material that the
particle went through and caused the deflection and X 0 is the radiation length in cm
which will be discussed later. If one is interested to compute the deflection on the
trajectory plane as shown in Fig. 7 an extra factor of  2 need to be introduced:

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2
2 z Es dL
  =  ×
p2
RMS PLANE
X0

Energy Loss by Electrons

The basic process that the electrons lose energy when they pass through a material is
shown in Fig. 8. and it is called Bremstrahlung radiation. The key idea to this diagram is
that an electron in vacuum cannot just radiate a photon without exchanging a soft photon
with a heavier nucleus in its neighborhood2.

Figure 8: The Bremstrahlung process.

Lets try to guess the cross section of this process:

From the strength of the electromagnetic interaction and basic Feynman digram rules we
expect that amplitude for this process will be:
3 3/ 2
A ~ Z e ~ Z QED

and the cross section will be:

2
 ~ ∣A∣ ~ Z 2 e 6 ~ Z 2 QED
3

However, this has the wrong units since it is obviously a number. The only other variable
involved in this problem is the electron mass and to get the correct units for cross section
(length square) one needs to divide by the electron mass square to get the correct units.

2
To show this go to the rest frame of the incident electron and compute the kinematics of e→eγ.

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Z 2  QED
3
Z 2 e6
2
 ~ ∣A∣ ~ ~
m 2e m 2e

Of course this is units of GeV −2 which in our system of units is the unit of length square.
If one wants to convert this to square meters, he must multiply or divide by factors of
ℏ , c to get the correct units. It turns out that the formula then becomes:
2 3
Z  QED
 ~ 2 4
× ℏ c2
m c e

Now it should be obvious why the electrons behave radically different than the muons:
The radiation rate in inversely proportional to the square of the mass. The muons radiate
2 2
also but m e / m  ~ 1/ 200 less than electrons. Hence, the effect is negligible and
the muons can only lose energy via the Bethe-Bloch process. In the case of the much
lighter electrons the dominant process is obviously Bremstrahlung which sometimes is
called Bethe-Heitler process.

Lets proceed now to compute the dE / dx for electrons due to the Bremstrahlung process:

Z 2  QED
3
d ℏ c2
~ × ⇒
d 2 4
me c 

where  is the energy transferred. The total energy transferred over an interval dx is then
computed as follows.
 max 2 3 2 3
dE Z  QED ℏ c2 Z  QED
− ~ n∫  × × d = n ℏ c2  max − min 
dx 
2 4
me c
min
 2 4
me c

where n is the number of nuclei per cubic centimeter and  max ,  min are the maximum
and the minimum energy transfer. The later can be taken to be almost zero. An extra
factor of 4 ln 183/ Z 1/ 3  is needed to account for integrating over the range of possible
impact parameters and the result then reads:

Z 2 QED
3
dE 183
= −4 n ℏ c2 ln 1/ 3  E  E= max 
dx 2 4
me c Z

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where the relationship

Z 2  QED
3
1 183
= 4n ℏ c2 ln  1/ 3 
X0 2 4
me c Z

defines the radiation length. Hence,

x
−
dE E X0
= − ⇒ E  x  = E0 e
dx X0

Figure 9: Contributions to the energy loss by electrons as a function of energy in MeV.

Therefore after one radiation length one expects that the electron has 1/e of its energy left.
As shown here the radiation length has units of length. However, often it is given in units
of g/cm2 and one has to divide by the density of the material to convert it to centimeters.

One would then ask when does the electron lose energy via this process and when via the
Bethe-Bloch process. As one can guess the faster the electron is the more likely is to

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radiate photons when it slows down in the presence of a material. At low energies the
Bethe-Bloch process should then dominate. As seen in Fig. 9 in copper below 10 MeV
the Bethe-Bloch process dominates and above that the Bremstrahlung process which rises
linearly with energy becomes dominant.

The energy where the Bethe-Bloch contribution is equal to the Bremstrahlung

contribution is called critical energy and depends inversely proportional to the atomic
number of the material involved. The critical energy is given by:

560 MeV
Ec ≃
Z

Obviously this is an approximate formula and in practice it is different for gases, liquids
and solids. One find in the literature also the following different formulas for solids-
liquids and gasses.

610 MeV 710 MeV

 E c  Solid / Liquid ≃ ;  E c Gas ≃
Z 1.24 Z 1.24

These are clearly approximations derived from data.

Electromagnetic Cascades (Showers)

Lets try to get an idea of what happens when an electron beam hits a target. Obviously
from what we have learned so far the electron will emit a Bremstrahlung photon again
and again in a process that the electron loses energy until it reaches the critical energy
where the radiation process becomes negligible and the ionization energy loss dominates.
The photons from the electron if they are energetic enough will create electron-positron
pairs which in turn will radiate again. If they are not energetic enough they will lose
energy via the Compton or the Photoelectric effects. The entire collection of these
photons and electrons is called electromagnetic shower or electromagnetic cascade.

So lets create a simple model to describe this process. Lets assume that for every
radiation length that the particles propagate in the material we get either an electron-
positron pair if the parent particle is a photon or an electron-photon pair if the parent
particle is an electron. The process is shown in Fig. 10 and starts with a photon but it
could have equally well have started with an electron emitting a photon. The student who
thinks that this model is simplistic should look to Fig. 11 and convince herself/himself
that these things actually happen in the way we have hypothesized.

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Figure 10: A model of the electromagnetic cascade where one assumes that one electron-positron or an
electron-photon pair will be crated for every radiation length in the material in a process that subdivides
the energy of the original particle until the particles reach the critical energy for the specific material.

Figure 11: An actual picture of an electromagnetic cascade in a cloud chamber instrumented with metal
plates to force the electron to lose energy.

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Clearly, according to our model, the number of particles created rises as:

t
N t  = 2

where t is the number of interaction lengths in the material. The process goes on until all
the particles have reached the critical energy. From this point on the shower electrons lose
energy by ionizing the material around them and get absorbed. Photons keep pair-creating
until their energy is below 1 MeV after which point they lose energy only via the
Compton and the Photoelectric effects. Obviously this is an approximation but a good
one.

Next we can calculate at which point we will have reached the maximum number of
particles:

The average energy of each particle at depth t-radiation lengths is:

E0
E t  = t
2

The maximum number of particles is reached when:

E0 Ec 1 E
Ec = ⇒ ln   = −ln2⋅t max ⇒ t max = ln  0 
t
max E0 ln2 Ec
2

Another approximation of this formula is given by:

E0
t max = ln  0.5  X 0  which is valid for photons.
Ec

and

E0
t max = ln −0.5  X 0  which is valid for electrons.
Ec

As seen here electromagnetic showers originating from electrons reach their maximum
about one radiation length deeper than those originating from electrons. Note that the
depth at the shower maximum is given in units of radiation lengths. The reader should
compare these formulas with the data from Fig.12 to convince himself/herself that they
work.

All these formulas indicate that that the electromagnetic shower depth grows
logarithmically with the shower energy.

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Next we can try to derive roughly the number of particles crated.

t max

N TOTAL = ∑ 2t = 2
t max 1
−1 ≃ 2
t max 1
= 2⋅2
t max

and substituting for t max we have:

E0
N TOTAL ≃ 2
Ec

Hence, the number of particles in a shower grows linearly with energy. Dividing the
electron energy by the critical energy gives an order of magnitude estimate of the number
of particles crated. However, if one want to contain the electromagnetic shower will need
to place material of depth larger than t max . As seen from Fig. 12, for a 95% containment
one would have to add of the order of 10 radiation lengths to allow all the particles to
loose their energy via ionization and get absorbed. The equation which give the 95%
containment of an electromagnetic shower is:

t 95 % ≃ t max 0.08 Z 9.6 (in radiation lengths)

Finally the transverse size of an electromagnetic shower is characterized by the Moliere

radius which is given by:

21 MeV
RM = X0 or
Ec

A −2
RM = 7 g cm (need to divide by density)
Z

For 95% transverse containment one would use:

A −2
R 95 % = 14 g cm
Z

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Figure 12: The normalized differential distribution of energy deposition in iron from 30 GeV Electrons.

Calorimeters: These are instruments that measure the energy of an electromagnetic

shower by essentially measuring the total number of particles in a shower. There are
uniform and sampling calorimeters:

Uniform calorimeters are instruments made typically of active materials with short
radiation length which absorbs the entire electromagnetic shower and converts the energy
deposited to light which can be measured using light sensitive devices such as photo-
tubes. Uniform calorimeters are active throughout their volume. A sampling calorimeter
does not 'see' all the energy of the electromagnetic shower but only a fraction of it. It is
typically constructed by plates of absorber of thickness, d, with layers of active material
in placed in between. An example of a sampling calorimeter is shown in Fig. 13.

The energy resolution of a calorimeter is given by:

E B C
= A  + +
E E E

The constant term, A, is due to uncertainties in the uniformity and inter-calibration of the
the various calorimeter elements. The B /  E term is called the stochastic term and
originates from fluctuations of the particles in electromagnetic shower. Since the incident
energy is proportional to the number of particles produced the stochastic term of the
resolution is going to be:

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E 1 1
~ ~
E  N TOTAL E
The term C / E has its origin in noise. The constant, stochastic and noise uncertainty
contributions are independent errors and to compute the total error one will have to add
them in quadrature. Hence, the plus signs in the formula indicate summation in
quadrature.

The stochastic term of the calorimeter resolution can be computed roughly from:

E
~
 F W
E E
where F is a factor which accounts for the fact that the overall energy does not fluctuate
(Fano factor) and W ~ E c is the energy typical to a single interaction. Note that E /W
is proportional to the total number of particles created.

Figure 13: A sampling calorimeter with absorber plates of thickness, d, shown in gray and active material
placed in between them.

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The stochastic term of a sampling calorimeter is given by:

E
E
=
 Ec d
F f E0 X 0

where E 0, E c , X 0 are the incident particle energy, the critical energy of the absorber, and
the radiation length of the absorber in cm. f Is the sampling fraction of the calorimeter
(the percentage of energy deposited on the active material) and F is a correction factor
which takes in to account that some particle tracks are lost due to the energy cutoff of the
calorimeter (most calorimeters are insensitive to particles of energy below a fraction of
MeV). As the reader realizes the quantity E 0 / E c d / X 0  is simply the number of
particles of the shower.

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The Cloud Chamber

A number of important measurements in the early years of particle physics were done
using an instrument called the Cloud Chamber. By today’s standards the Cloud Chamber
is a very crude instrument and can easily be constructed in an undergraduate lab with a
budget of the order of £ 50. However, the discovery of the positron, the muon, the strange
particles and our early knowledge on the nature of cosmic rays have their origins to this
device. The cloud chamber was developed by C.T.R. Wilson (Cambridge) in 1896 who
got the Nobel price for his invention in 1927.

Figure 14: A picture of the expansion cloud chamber (Left). The cloud chamber is at the top left of the
device. The glass vacuum chamber is shown to the right. The black metal cylinder contains a piston which
was driven by the vacuum using valves. The detailed design of the instrument is shown in the picture at the
center. A picture of the inventor of this device, C.T.R. Wilson, is shown to the right.

A typical example of an early Cloud Chamber is shown in Fig 14. This is an expansion
type Cloud Chamber and works as follows: The chamber at the top left is filled with a
vapor which is usually alcohol or a mixture of alcohol and water. The vacuum chamber
to the right is controlled by a valve and is used to ‘suck-down’ a piston. The resulting
expansion of the vapor in the chamber cools it and thus creates a supersaturated
atmosphere. This means that the vapor temperature is lower than the normal temperature
that the vapor exists and will immediately condensate under certain conditions. However,
supersaturated vapor will not condensate unless if it is seeded. When a charged particle
goes through the chamber it ionizes the medium. The positive ions provide such a
condensation seed and condensation starts along the charged particle path. Hence,
charged particle paths can be observed by the small droplets they leave behind. In the
early days of the Cloud Chamber work the chamber would be illuminated from one side
and pictures would be made from the other side. If an interaction occurred when the
picture was made, it was recorded. As the reader may guess this not a very efficient way
of doing this and a method to trigger the camera to record pictures when an interaction
had occurred was later introduced by P.M.S. Blackett who also got a Nobel price for his
contributions to research using Cloud Chambers.

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Often the Cloud Chamber was put in a magnetic field which was used to bend the particle
trajectories and measure their momentum using the formula:

p GeV 
R  m =
0.3 B Tesla

where R is the radius in meters p the momentum in GeV and B the magnetic field in
Tesla.

It was also a usual practice to insert a metal sheet in to the chamber. This forced charged
particles traversing the sheet to lose a large amount of energy over a short distance. As
one expects intuitively the energy loss per centimeter in a metal must be larger than that
in a gas. This meant that the particles exiting the metal would bend more in the magnetic
field. Hence, one could tell their direction and also measure the energy loss of the
particles as they traversed different types of materials.

Figures 15 and 16 show typical pictures taken by Cloud Chambers:

Figure 15 shows several electrons and positrons. The positrons and electrons bend in
opposite directions in the magnetic field of the chamber due to their opposite charges. In
addition to the 6 high momentum tracks one can clearly see 2 tracks which curl more in
the magnetic field of the chamber because they have considerably less momentum. These
two tracks are identified as those from an electron and a positron which were pair-
produced by a photon radiated of one of the primary electrons. Hence, their momentum is
smaller than the primary electron.

Figure 16 shows a Cloud Chamber with a piece of absorber placed in the chamber.
Particles colliding with it produce showers of new particles which can be seen at the other
side of the absorber. One of the particles produced is a neutral kaon or its anti-particle
decaying to two charged pions.

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Figure 15: Two pictures of a Cloud Chamber event. The picture to the left is taken from the top side of the
chamber and shows 3 electrons (left side) and 3 positrons (right side). The picture to the left shows the
same event shown from the bottom of the chamber. The slow particles which curl more in the magnetic
field are the result of a photon radiated presumably from the electron which subsequently splits in to an
electron-positron pair.

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Figure 16: A famous picture from a Cloud Chamber. The metal sheet can be clearly seen in the middle of
the chamber. Also clear is that some particles lose energy rapidly and their paths degenerate to curly
tracks where other particles don’t and follow somewhat straighter trajectories bent slightly only due to the
magnetic filed. This picture is famous because at the lower right side it shows for first time the decay of a
neutral strange particle to two charged pions.

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The Discovery of the Muon (1937)

In 1937 S.H. Neddermeyer and C.D. Anderson at Caltech measured the energy loss of
cosmic ray particles as they passed through an 1 cm plate of platinum placed in a Cloud
Chamber. The Cloud Chamber was placed in a uniform magnetic filed so that the
curvature of the particle trajectories could be measured before entering the platinum and
after exiting the platinum. Hence, they could compute the energy loss suffered by
particles. Obviously what was actually measured was the particle momenta from which
one could infer the energies of the particles if he/she assumed the mass. This was not very
hard those days since they knew only three types of particles, the proton, the electron and
the positron which had recently been discovered and would be the subject of discussion
later on in the course.

What Neddermayer and Anderson found is summarized in Figure 17.

Figure 17: The energy loss of particles plotted versus the particle initial energy (left).The histogram to the
right shows the number of events versus the percent energy loss. The events shown at the negative side of
the histogram are due to experimental resolution but also due to tracks which move upwards whereas they
have been accounted as downwards going tracks.

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Their results demonstrate the there were two categories of particles:

I. Particles that lost a significant fraction of their energy in the platinum. The energy
they lost was proportional to their initial energy in agreement with the Bethe
Heitler theory ( dE / dx = −E / X 0  ). Hence they are concentrated close to the
straight line of Fig. 16 (left) and are also shown as the shaded histogram in Fig.16
(right) concentrated between 0.8 and 1.0 (significant part of their energy lost). As
one expects these particles were electrons and positrons.
II. Penetrating particles which lose a small fraction of their energy in platinum. These
are shown clearly in the histogram to the right of Fig. 16 and they are concentrated
below 0.2 (energy lost less than 20% of the initial energy).

Of course the big question was what kind of particles were the penetrating particles of
category II. To figure this one out, one has to know how do charged particles lose energy
due to ionisation of the medium that they traverse.

They were not protons because the momentum accessible to this experiment was below
500 MeV/c and protons of this kinetic energy would be highly ionizing since they would
be very slow. The highest momentum track had a momentum of :

p = 0.3⋅B⋅R = 0.3×4.5×105 Gauss⋅cm = 135 MeV / c

Hence, if the were protons they would have had :

  = 135 MeV / 938 MeV = 0.14

which would place them right on the 1/ 2 region of the Bethe-Bloch formula were the
energy loss is about 10 MeV cm 2 / g . This would have been indicated by the high density
of droplets (very dense cloud chamber tracks) which was of course not observed. A
proton track at this speed would have had a track that had 25 times larger droplet density
than that from an electron of the same momentum.

They were not electrons either. Electrons of momentum 135 MeV/c are fast and have:

  = 135 MeV / 0.511 MeV = 264.2

Although the energy they would lose via ionization is small ~ 2.0 MeV cm2/g, they
should lose a significant fraction of their energy via Bremstrahlung, dE / dx = −E / X 0 
and the energy loss should have been proportional to their original energy, which
according to the data shown in Fig. 17 it did not happen for the category of the
penetrating particles.

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Hence, Anderson and Neddermeyer claimed discovery of new particles which were
neither electrons (or positrons) nor protons (they only particles they knew then).
Stevenson and Street followed up with their experiment shortly after them investigating
the nature of these penetrating particles.

Figure 18: The apparatus of Stevenson and Street (left) selected particles which stopped in the cloud
chamber, C, using a trigger which fired when Geiger counters 1,2,3 had fired and counters 4 had not
fired. Hence, it selected particles whose energy was a little larger than the energy loss suffered in the lead
block L. One of these events is shown in the picture to the right.
Stevenson and Street used the cloud chamber apparatus of Fig. 17 (left) placed in a
magnetic field. The technique they used to trigger the camera of the cloud chamber had
been pioneered earlier by Blackett (who got the Nobel for this technique among other
things he did). They used Geiger counters which fired when a charged particle went
through. The signals from the Geiger counters triggered then the camera of the cloud
chamber to take a picture. This way pictures were taken only when particles went through
and not at random.

Stevenson and Street designed their apparatus to select slow particles which stopped in
the cloud chamber. This way they could clearly measure well both the track momentum
(they bend a lot) as well as the track ionization ( 1/ 2 ) by measuring the droplet density
of the tracks. The trigger condition to record a picture were that Geiger counters 1,2,3 had
fired but Geiger 4 had not fired ( 1⋅2⋅3⋅4 ). This way the particle had stopped in the
chamber. To fix the energy range of the particle a lead block was placed between counters
2 and 3.

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This block stopped low energy particles and let through only particle that had kinetic
energy which was larger than the ionization energy loss in the lead block. However since
the particles were required to stop in the chamber their kinetic energy as they exited the
led block was very small. Hence, their energy was approximately equal to the energy loss
in the lead block.

Using this apparatus the observed the track shown at the right of Fig. 17. This track had:

p = 0.3⋅B⋅R = 0.3×9.6×10 4 Gauss⋅cm = 28.8 MeV / c (1)

and the it was 6 times denser than an electron track of similar momentum. An electron at
this momentum is already relativistic:

  = 28.8 MeV / c / 0.511 MeV = 56.4 ⇒ v e ≃ c

Hence, the observed track ionized six times more than a relativistic electron which meant
that:

dE 1
  2
dx TRACK 
= TRACK = 6 ⇒  TRACK = 0.45 (2)
dE 1
 
dx relativistic−e 12

From (1) and (2) they derived that the mass of this particle was:

mTRACK = 28.8/ 0.45 MeV ≃ 65 MeV

So they proved that the particle mass was indeed somewhere between the electron mass
and the proton mass. These particles were what we call today muons and have mass:

m = 105.7 MeV

So their experimental error was of the order of 100% although in their paper they
claimed a 25% error. However, they did show beyond doubt the the new particle had a
mass that was very different than either the proton or the electron masses and this was
good enough to confirm the result of Anderson and Neddermeyer.

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Figure 19: Anderson(left) who discovered of the positron and the muon. Blackett who pioneered the
triggering techniques for cloud chambers.

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