SBIR-STTR Award

Wire chambers are a class of particle track detectorsthat have found wide applications in high energy particle physicsexperiments. Large wire chamber detectors have become rathercomplex, requiring many fast electronic circuits. Thisinvestigation offers the potential of simplification and costreduction for large wire chamber detectors. The Phase I effort isinvestigating the feasibility of using the Kerr effect to providepositional information by using an array of optical fibers immersedin a Kerr medium. The technique being investigated depends on achange in the refractive index induced by passage of an ionizingparticle in a Kerr medium next to an optical fiber. If theresulting refractive index is close to that of the fiber, any lightsignal passing through the fiber will be interrupted. A strobelight pulse at the time of an expected event will thus be reducedor cut off. A method of reducing the cost and complexity ofprocessing the signals of a large optical fiber array is also beingstudied. The strobe light signals from a number of fibers are fedinto a single fiber with individually different delays provided byfiber coils of different lengths. The output is thus a string ofpulses arriving at different times. The passage of a chargedparticle next to any fiber results in the suppression of thecorresponding strobe pulse.Anticipated Results/Potential Commercial Applications as described by the awardee:If successful, this detector system will provide aninexpensive, large, position-sensitive device that will be muchless sensitive to electronic interference than are conventionalwire chambers. Such a detector, although limited in the timinginformation provided, should have application at largeaccelerators.