Skip to main content.
Welcome to the Virtual Visitor Center at SLAC

Virtual Visitor Center at SLAC

Event Display Pictures : Muon-Pair Production

An initial electron and positron annihilate and the resulting Z-particle decays producing a muon and an anti-muon.

formula

The fast-moving muons, a much heavier "copy" of electrons, are too massive to be affected much by atomic electric fields, so no electromagnetic shower develops. They also have no strong interactions, so no hadron shower develops either. The two decay particles, therefore, pass all the way through the detector before decaying somewhere outside of it. In fact, muons are the only charged particles that can get all the way through the detector. Hence, the outer layer, the Warm Iron Calorimeter (WIC), is used as a muon detector --  charged particles which leave a single track all the way to the outside of the detector are identified as muons.

"Click" on the image below. The image will open into a new browser window
so you can look at it and read about it at the same time.

Event 11572_3495_500_z_mupair
Event 11572_3495_500_z_mupair

Notice in the picture the two muons leave "tracks" (the pattern of hits has been computer-connected to make this picture) in the drift chamber and discrete red "hits" in the yellow octagonal WIC. Almost no energy is lost  in the inner calorimeter (pictured in blue).

muonpr.gif (29891 bytes)
Drift chamber hit pattern, enlarged.

Last update: