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| astra412 2002-11-03 13:09:27 | Out of simple curiosity; why is % transfer used apropos to the number of muons that actually reach the detector? That is ultimately the most important variable when dealing with these short-lived rare particles, isn't it? If that's in the FAQ or tech report just let me know. Astra412 |
| prokaryote 2002-11-03 13:34:52 | This is pure speculation on my part, but I'm guessing that since the incident proton beam that hits the tantalum rod is of fixed energy and duration, that the number of particles created at the beginning is therefore also approximately fixed. Therefore, % transfered is a good measure of effectiveness of the device. www.ninjamicros.com mathematical projects |
| Midon 2002-11-04 04:39:08 | Hi, in principle you are right. But you have many statistical and other fluctuations. This includes the beam itself and also the production of the particles. I made an experiment at an accelerator which needs a very accuarate number of protons in each bump of the beam and this was really not very easy to produce. You have to fold all statistics. This results in variations from one bump to the next. Which will dramatically increase with the slight change of your machines over several hours (I had some time only 100 nanoamps sometime up to 3 muamps protons) But this experiment is interested to get the maximum number of particles out of the accelerator depending of the number of particles entered. And the % is measuring this. |
| Stephen Brooks 2002-11-04 06:39:27 | One reason I use percentages is that I don't simulate _all_ the muons. It works out that in reality >10^12 particles will be emitted from the rod and that would take an entire DC project just to do one simulation! Instead, we use a representative sample (20`000 or so) of the emitted particles. This is also why there are statistical fluctuations of the result even for identical designs. "As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline" |
