The Hall A Aerogel Čerenkov detector

• Main Author: Coman, Marius
• Format: Others
• Published: FIU Digital Commons 2000
• Subjects: Physics
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2413; http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3599&context=etd

The efficiency of the Aerogel Čerenkov detector for detecting particles having velocities greater than the speed of light in the aerogel media and the yield for rejecting particles having subthreshold velocities - smaller than the speed of light in the interaction media - was studied and is presented. The efficiency/inefficiency determination of the Aerogel Čerenkov detector consists of calculating the probabilities that a particle having a velocity above/below threshold generates a photoelectron in the aerogel block. The efficiency is determined using the normalised pulse height distribution of the photoelectrons. The Aerogel Čerenkov detector will play a key role in particle identification (PID) processes in Hall A at Jefferson Lab, allowing the separation of pseudoscalar mesons from pions which is required for many experiments to tag the flavor of the mesons and to identify the final states of interest for various experiments performed at Jefferson Lab.