Author

Apurva Pathak

Date of Award

12-1997

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Dr. Paul Pancella

Second Advisor

Dr. Gerald Hardie

Third Advisor

Dr. Lisa Paulius

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Alvin Rosenthal

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

A new, large, scintillation detector, called the "K" detector has been designed and built for use in a series of nuclear physics experiments being performed at the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility (IUCF). This project describes the design, construction and testing of this scintillation detector. The K detector was designed to augment an existing detector stack at IUCF, and will serve to increase the energy range of previous studies of neutral pion production in proton-proton collisions near threshold. The test data for the current project came from a proton-proton scattering experiment, during which several runs were carried out between the bombarding proton energies of 200 MeV and 500 MeV. The scale factor, calculated to convert raw pulse heights into the energies deposited in the K detector by the forward scattered protons, exhibits angle dependence, indicating an angle or position dependence in the light collection efficiency of the K detector. In view of this angle dependence, a dimensionless angle dependent factor F(Θ) was introduced and calculated, which produces a better agreement with the theoretical predictions for the energy lost by the forward scattered protons in the K detector. The angle dependence in the light collection efficiency of the K detector has been confirmed by the ongoing experiments at IUCF.

Included in

Nuclear Commons

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