The characteristics of a bubble chamber using liquid nitrogen and argon

Abstract

The last ten years have seen the development of a useful new tool for the study of high energy nuclear reactions and fundamental particles. This device, the bubble chamber, makes use of a superheated liquid to display the path of a charged particle as a trail of small bubbles.

The bubble chamber has several features which make it more useful in many experiments than either the cloud chamber or the nuclear track plate. Since the liquid in a bubble chamber is considerably more dense than the vapor in a cloud chamber, there is a much better possibility of seeing a nuclear interaction when the chamber is placed in a beam of high energy particles. Moreover, fan interaction does take place, the resulting particles are more likely 'to be stopped inside the chamber. Thus, more events occur in the bubble chamber, and these events are easier to interpret than in the cloud chamber. In addition to these benefits, most bubble chambers can be cycled faster than expansion-type cloud chambers, and they may be built with a larger sensitive volume than is practical with diffusion cloud chambers.