Gargamelle

Gargamelle was a particle detector at CERN in Geneva. It was a bubble chamber in which the tracks of charged particles could be visualized.

The detector

Gargamelle was one of the largest ever built bubble chambers. It consisted of a horizontally structured, 4.8 meters long and 1.88 meters in the interior by measuring cylinder. It was filled with heavy, pressurized fluids in order to obtain as high event rates in difficult to detect particles such as neutrinos. Were used propane, freon, or mixtures of these two substances, each about 12,000 liters.

History

The construction of Gargamelle was proposed in 1964 by André Lagarrigue. In December 1965, CERN, the French CEA agreed, the École polytechnique and the Orsay laboratory of the École Normale Supérieure on the implementation of the project. The name of the detector was borrowed from a work by the Renaissance writer François Rabelais, Gargamelle is in the name of a giantess.

It was built in the detector Saturne Laboratory of the CEA in Saclay. In 1970 he was installed at CERN, as a beam source used was the proton synchrotron. In December, the first test runs with the detection of cosmic radiation began.

From 1976 Gargamelle was operated at the Super Proton Synchrotron and was part of the West Area Neutrino Facility. After a crack in the chamber, which occurred on 26 October 1978, the experiment was terminated in 1979 due to the expected repair costs. Today, the chamber is along with other former detectors, such as the BEBC, in the Microcosm exhibition. The used before 1976 hall stood empty for 20 years and is now co-used for the ATLAS detector.

Research program and results

In November 1968 a list of priorities for research on Gargamelle was erected at a conference in Milan. It was led by the search for the W bosons, other topics were the investigation of deep - inelastic scattering and form factors of atomic nuclei and the search for the Z- boson and heavy leptons. From the beginning Gargamelle was also designed for the detection of secondary particles after the passage of neutrinos.

The most important result of the experiment was the first experimental demonstration of the Z boson and thus the neutral process of the weak interaction in 1973. Moreover reach important early results for neutrino -electron scattering. For their participation in the discovery of weak neutral currents at Gargamelle Dieter Haidt and Antonino Pullia 2011 received the Premio Enrico Fermi. Participation was also Helmut Faissner. 2009 received the Gargamelle collaboration for this discovery the high-energy and particle physics Prize of the European Physical Society.

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