Chapter 1
Introduction
Christian W. Fabjan and Herwig Schopper
Enormous progress has been achieved during the last three decades in the understanding of the microcosm. This was possible by a close interplay between new
theoretical ideas and precise experimental data. The present state of our knowledge
has been summarised in Volume I/21A “Theory and Experiments”. This Volume
I/21B is devoted to detection methods and techniques and data acquisition and
handling.
The rapid increase of our knowledge of the microcosm was possible only because
of an astonishingly fast evolution of detectors for particles and photons. Since
the early days of scintillation screens and Geiger counters a series of completely
new detector concepts was developed. They are based on imaginative ideas,
sometimes even earning a Nobel Prize, combined with sophisticated technological
developments. It might seem surprising that the exploration of an utterly abstract
domain like particle physics, requires the most advanced techniques, but this makes
the whole field so attractive.
The development of detectors was above all pushed by the requirements of
particle physics. In order to explore smaller structures one has to use finer probes,
i.e. shorter wavelengths implying higher particle energies. This requires detectors
for high-energy particles and photons. At the same time one has to cope with
the quantum-mechanical principle that cross sections for particle interactions have
a tendency to fall with increasing interaction energy. Therefore accelerators or
colliders have to deliver not only higher energies but at the same time also higher
collision rates. This implies that detectors must sustain higher rates. This problem
is aggravated by the fact that the high-energy frontier is at present linked to hadron
C. W. Fabjan ()
Austrian Academy of Sciences and University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: Chris.Fabjan@cern.ch
H. Schopper
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
© The Author(s) 2020
C. W. Fabjan, H. Schopper (eds.), Particle Physics Reference Library,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35318-6_1
1
Introduction
Christian W. Fabjan and Herwig Schopper
Enormous progress has been achieved during the last three decades in the understanding of the microcosm. This was possible by a close interplay between new
theoretical ideas and precise experimental data. The present state of our knowledge
has been summarised in Volume I/21A “Theory and Experiments”. This Volume
I/21B is devoted to detection methods and techniques and data acquisition and
handling.
The rapid increase of our knowledge of the microcosm was possible only because
of an astonishingly fast evolution of detectors for particles and photons. Since
the early days of scintillation screens and Geiger counters a series of completely
new detector concepts was developed. They are based on imaginative ideas,
sometimes even earning a Nobel Prize, combined with sophisticated technological
developments. It might seem surprising that the exploration of an utterly abstract
domain like particle physics, requires the most advanced techniques, but this makes
the whole field so attractive.
The development of detectors was above all pushed by the requirements of
particle physics. In order to explore smaller structures one has to use finer probes,
i.e. shorter wavelengths implying higher particle energies. This requires detectors
for high-energy particles and photons. At the same time one has to cope with
the quantum-mechanical principle that cross sections for particle interactions have
a tendency to fall with increasing interaction energy. Therefore accelerators or
colliders have to deliver not only higher energies but at the same time also higher
collision rates. This implies that detectors must sustain higher rates. This problem
is aggravated by the fact that the high-energy frontier is at present linked to hadron
C. W. Fabjan ()
Austrian Academy of Sciences and University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: Chris.Fabjan@cern.ch
H. Schopper
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
© The Author(s) 2020
C. W. Fabjan, H. Schopper (eds.), Particle Physics Reference Library,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35318-6_1
1