Measurement of lifetime for muons captured inside nuclei
Content 1. Introduce of the muon capture 2. The difference of the free decay and captured decay 3. How to measure the capture event 4. The apparatus of this experiment 5. The analysis of this experiment 6. Summary
Introduce of the muon capture
Muonic atom 1. Muon entering the matter 2. Electromagnetic interactions 3. One electron is replaced by muon and transitions down to the muonic atom K-shell around sec
Muonic atom Due to the relatively high mass of muon, the Bohr radius of muon is 206.7 times smaller than electron orbit Only negative charged muon can form muonic atom
Muon capture There are two process of muon capture : μ+p→n+ν μ+p→n+ν+γ The process contains no charged particles in the results The process is relatively fast Only negative charged muon may be captured
The difference of the free decay and captured decay
About muon lifetime Muon lifetime is a typical process of radioactive decay. The radioactive decay is a random process, independent of the previous life of the particle.
Muon lifetime distribution is a constant “decay rate” The number of decayed muon The number of muons at time t We call the muon lifetime is
The example of muon lifetime measurement
Muon captured lifetime distribution The capture decay lifetime is also a radioactive decay. Because of the relative short lifetime of capture process, the lifetime we measured will less than free decay lifetime.
How the muon capture affect the muon lifetime measurement The free decay lifetime: The capture decay lifetime: Here the A and C are constants, B is the mean lifetime of freedecay, D is the mean lifetime of capture decay, E is the randomaccidental coincidence which produced by the noise.
The example of muon capture lifetime measurement
How to measure the capture event
How to measure the capture process The two process of capture are: μ+p→n+ν μ+p→n+ν+γ We can try to measure the n or γ-ray
Measuring the γ-ray γ-ray are more efficiently detected by high Z materials. To detect the γ-ray, the material’s cross sections of photoelectric and pair production must large compared to the compton scattering cross section NaI is a good material to detect the γ-ray.
Measuring the neutron The most common method to detect neutron is using another charged particles to replace the kinetic energy of neutron. The neutron in the plastic scintillator or organic scintillator may have a strong probability to collide with the hydrogen's proton and transfer kinetic energy to the proton.
The apparatus of this experiment
The experiment flow chart
The detectors μ n p
Experiment setup
TDC flow chart
ADC flow chart
The good event nim timing chart μ n p
The cross event1 nim timing chart particle
The cross event2 nim timing chart particle
Muon flux The flux of sea level muons is almost for horizontal detectors For this experiment, the effective area of the detector is The probability of two cosmic rays comes in 10 micro-sec is almost
The analysis of this experiment
The qualitative analysis of adc
The qualitative analysis of tdc
Cu target quantitative analysis
Fe target quantitative analysis
Al target quantitative analysis
Summary
The result The average result The experiment result