Abstract
Here, the measurement methods for identifying massive charged particles are investigated. They have been used from early cosmic ray studies up to the present day. Laws such as the classical Lorentz force and Einstein’s relativistic kinematics were established before the rise of quantum mechanics. Later, it became crucial to measure the energy loss of charged particles in matter. In 1930, Bethe developed a semi-classical model based on the quantum mechanics of scattering. In the early 1930s, he and others calculated the passage of charged particles through matter including pair creation and bremsstrahlung. Due to missing trust in quantum electrodynamics, however, only semi-empirical methods were employed in order to estimate the mass and charge from the features of particle tracks. In 1932, Anderson inserted a lead plate into the cloud chamber in order to determine the flight direction and charge of the ‘positive electron’. In the 1940s, nuclear emulsions helped to resolve puzzles about particle identification and quantum electrodynamics. Later, the measurement theory was extended in a cumulative process by adding conservation laws for dynamic properties, probabilistic quantum formulas for resonances, scattering cross sections, etc. The measurement method was taken over from cosmic ray studies to the era of particle accelerators, and finally taken back from there to astroparticle physics. The measurement methods remained the same, but in the transition from particle to astroparticle physics the focus of interest shifted. Indeed, the experimental methods of both fields explore the grounds of ‘new physics’ in complementary ways.
Later I was asked to sit and count the tic-tac of the cosmic rays and only then did I accept for the first time the existence of cosmic rays. Until then I had been convinced that they were an invention of Bruno and other scientists
Nora Lombroso (Rossi, 1990, 167)
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Falkenburg, B. (2012). From Waves to Particle Tracks and Quantum Probabilities. In: Falkenburg, B., Rhode, W. (eds) From Ultra Rays to Astroparticles. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5422-5_10
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