Muon Detection & Decay Time: Scintillator Explained

  • Context: Graduate 
  • Thread starter Thread starter Submarine
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Muon Scintillator
Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
1 reply · 3K views
Submarine
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Hi everybody,

I am trying to set up a lab experiment on muon detection and determination of its decay time.

I know that when a muon first reaches the scintillator it slows down because of ionization and atomic excitation of solvent molecules. The deposited energy is transferred to the fluor molecules (of the scintillator matter) whose electrons are promoted to excited states. The electrons then start emitting light. This is the first event of scintillation.

After that muon decays into an electron, a neutrino and an anti-neutrino. This electron then produces scintillator light again. The question is by what means, how does it make the scintillator to emit light? Is that because the electrons move at high speed and lose its kinetic energy in the same way as muon did?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Welcome to PF;
Imagine you could "inject" a slow electron into the crystal somehow ... what do you think it would do?

You can check your idea BTW: how much energy is released in the beta decay of a stationary muon?