Exercises in research groups (009)

Tests of gas proportional meters for the student cosmic ray observatory.
supervisor: dr hab. Grzegorz Grzelak, email: grzelak@fuw.edu.pl

In the Physics Laboratory for Advanced, a cosmic ray detector is being created, which will use 150 aluminum proportional chambers recording the trajectories of charged particles formed as a result of the interaction of primary cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. The chambers used in this project were previously used in the ZEUS experiment at the HERA accelerator at the DESY site in Hamburg. In order to select the best meters, a diagnostic station was prepared to check the tightness of the chambers and then, after filling them with a mixture of argon and carbon dioxide, to study the current-voltage characteristics and homogeneity of chamber responses in anode and cathode reading using muons from cosmic rays. This exercise provides excellent opportunities to get acquainted with the measuring equipment of particle physics, in particular the technique of detecting charged particles in gas detectors.