Cherenkov radiation - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Cherenkov radiation is electromagnetic radiation

Electromagnetic radiation

Electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy that exhibits wave-like behavior as it travels through space...

emitted when a charged

Electric charge

Electric charge is a physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when near other electrically charged matter. Electric charge comes in two types, called positive and negative. Two positively charged substances, or objects, experience a mutual repulsive force, as do two...

particle

Particle physics

Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the existence and interactions of particles that are the constituents of what is usually referred to as matter or radiation. In current understanding, particles are excitations of quantum fields and interact following their dynamics...

(such as an electron

Electron

The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...

) passes through a dielectric

Dielectric

A dielectric is an electrical insulator that can be polarized by an applied electric field. When a dielectric is placed in an electric field, electric charges do not flow through the material, as in a conductor, but only slightly shift from their average equilibrium positions causing dielectric...

medium at a speed

Speed

In kinematics, the speed of an object is the magnitude of its velocity ; it is thus a scalar quantity. The average speed of an object in an interval of time is the distance traveled by the object divided by the duration of the interval; the instantaneous speed is the limit of the average speed as...

greater than the phase velocity

Phase velocity

The phase velocity of a wave is the rate at which the phase of the wave propagates in space. This is the speed at which the phase of any one frequency component of the wave travels. For such a component, any given phase of the wave will appear to travel at the phase velocity...

of light

Speed of light

The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its value is 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time...

in that medium. The charged particles polarize the molecules of that medium, which then turn back rapidly to their ground state, emitting radiation in the process. The characteristic blue glow of nuclear reactor

Nuclear reactor

A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...

s is due to Cherenkov radiation. Its existence was predicted by the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

polymath

Polymath

A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...

Oliver Heaviside

Oliver Heaviside was a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist who adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits, invented mathematical techniques to the solution of differential equations , reformulated Maxwell's field equations in terms of electric and...

in papers published in 1888–89, but it is named after Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

scientist Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov

Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov

Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov was a Soviet physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1958 with Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm for the discovery of Cherenkov radiation, made in 1934.-Biography:...

, the 1958 Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...

winner who was the first to characterise it rigorously.

Physical origin

While electrodynamics

Classical electromagnetism

Classical electromagnetism is a branch of theoretical physics that studies consequences of the electromagnetic forces between electric charges and currents...

holds that the speed of light in a vacuum
Vacuum
In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...

is a universal constant (c), the speed at which light propagates in a material may be significantly less than c. For example, the speed of the propagation of light in water

Water

Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

is only 0.75c. Matter

Matter

Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...

can be accelerated beyond this speed (although still to less than c) during nuclear reactions and in particle accelerator

Particle accelerator

A particle accelerator is a device that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams. An ordinary CRT television set is a simple form of accelerator. There are two basic types: electrostatic and oscillating field accelerators.In...

s. Cherenkov radiation results when a charged particle, most commonly an electron

Electron

, travels through a dielectric

Dielectric

(electrically polarizable) medium with a speed greater than that at which light would otherwise propagate in the same medium.

Moreover, the velocity that must be exceeded is the phase velocity

Phase velocity

of light rather than the group velocity

Group velocity

The group velocity of a wave is the velocity with which the overall shape of the wave's amplitudes — known as the modulation or envelope of the wave — propagates through space....

of light. The phase velocity can be altered dramatically by employing a periodic medium, and in that case one can even achieve Cherenkov radiation with no minimum particle velocity—a phenomenon known as the Smith-Purcell effect

Smith-Purcell effect

The Smith–Purcell effect was the precursor of the free electron laser . It was studied by Steve Smith, a graduate student under the guidance of Edward Purcell. In their experiment, they sent an energetic beam of electrons very closely parallel to the surface of a ruled optical diffraction grating,...

. In a more complex periodic medium, such as a photonic crystal

Photonic crystal

Photonic crystals are periodic optical nanostructures that are designed to affect the motion of photons in a similar way that periodicity of a semiconductor crystal affects the motion of electrons...

, one can also obtain a variety of other anomalous Cherenkov effects, such as radiation in a backwards direction (whereas ordinary Cherenkov radiation forms an acute angle with the particle velocity).

As a charged particle travels, it disrupts the local electromagnetic field

Electromagnetic field

An electromagnetic field is a physical field produced by moving electrically charged objects. It affects the behavior of charged objects in the vicinity of the field. The electromagnetic field extends indefinitely throughout space and describes the electromagnetic interaction...

(EM) in its medium. Electrons in the atom

Atom

The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...

s of the medium will be displaced, and the atoms become polarized by the passing EM field of a charged particle. Photon

Photon

In physics, a photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of the electromagnetic interaction and the basic unit of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation. It is also the force carrier for the electromagnetic force...

s are emitted as an insulator's electrons restore themselves to equilibrium

Mechanical equilibrium

A standard definition of static equilibrium is:This is a strict definition, and often the term "static equilibrium" is used in a more relaxed manner interchangeably with "mechanical equilibrium", as defined next....

after the disruption has passed. (In a conductor, the EM disruption can be restored without emitting a photon.) In normal circumstances, these photons destructively interfere with each other and no radiation is detected. However, when a disruption which travels faster than light is propagating through the medium, the photons constructively interfere and intensify the observed radiation.

A common analogy is the sonic boom

Sonic boom

A sonic boom is the sound associated with the shock waves created by an object traveling through the air faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion...

of a supersonic

Supersonic

Supersonic speed is a rate of travel of an object that exceeds the speed of sound . For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C this speed is approximately 343 m/s, 1,125 ft/s, 768 mph or 1,235 km/h. Speeds greater than five times the speed of sound are often...

aircraft or bullet. The sound

Sound

Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...

waves generated by the supersonic

Supersonic

body propagate at the speed of sound itself; as such, the waves travel slower than the speeding object and cannot propagate forward from the body, instead forming a shock front

Shock wave

A shock wave is a type of propagating disturbance. Like an ordinary wave, it carries energy and can propagate through a medium or in some cases in the absence of a material medium, through a field such as the electromagnetic field...

. In a similar way, a charged particle can generate a photon

Photon

ic shock wave

Shock wave

as it travels through an insulator.

In the figure, the particle (red arrow) travels in a medium with speed

such that

, where

is speed of light

Speed of light

in vacuum

Vacuum

In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...

, and

is the refractive index

Refractive index

In optics the refractive index or index of refraction of a substance or medium is a measure of the speed of light in that medium. It is expressed as a ratio of the speed of light in vacuum relative to that in the considered medium....

of the medium. (If the medium is water, the condition is

, since

for water at 20 °C.)

We define the ratio between the speed of the particle and the speed of light as

. The emitted light waves

Electromagnetic radiation

Electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy that exhibits wave-like behavior as it travels through space...

(blue arrows) travel at speed

.

The left corner of the triangle represents the location of the superluminal particle at some initial moment (t=0). The right corner of the triangle is the location of the particle at some later time t. In the given time t, the particle travels the distance

whereas the emitted electromagnetic waves are constricted to travel the distance

So:

Note that since this ratio is independent of time, one can take arbitrary times and achieve similar triangles

Similarity (geometry)

Two geometrical objects are called similar if they both have the same shape. More precisely, either one is congruent to the result of a uniform scaling of the other...

. The angle stays the same, meaning that subsequent waves generated between the initial time t=0 and final time t will form similar triangles with coinciding right endpoints to the one shown.

Reverse Cherenkov effect

A reverse Cherenkov effect can be experienced using materials called negative-index metamaterial

Metamaterial

Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties that may not be found in nature. Metamaterials usually gain their properties from structure rather than composition, using small inhomogeneities to create effective macroscopic behavior....

s (materials with a subwavelength microstructure that gives them an effective "average" property very different from their constituent materials, in this case having negative permittivity

Permittivity

In electromagnetism, absolute permittivity is the measure of the resistance that is encountered when forming an electric field in a medium. In other words, permittivity is a measure of how an electric field affects, and is affected by, a dielectric medium. The permittivity of a medium describes how...

and negative permeability

Permeability (electromagnetism)

In electromagnetism, permeability is the measure of the ability of a material to support the formation of a magnetic field within itself. In other words, it is the degree of magnetization that a material obtains in response to an applied magnetic field. Magnetic permeability is typically...

). This means, when a charged particle (usually electrons) passes through a medium at a speed greater than the speed of light in that medium, that particle will radiate from a cone behind itself, rather than in front of it (as is the case in normal materials, with both permittivity and permeability positive). One can also obtain such reverse-cone Cherenkov radiation in non-metamaterial periodic media (where the periodic structure is on the same scale as the wavelength, so it cannot be treated as an effectively homogeneous metamaterial).

Characteristics

The frequency spectrum of Cherenkov radiation by a particle is given by the Frank–Tamm formula.
Unlike fluorescence

Fluorescence

Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation of a different wavelength. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation...

or emission

Stimulated emission

In optics, stimulated emission is the process by which an atomic electron interacting with an electromagnetic wave of a certain frequency may drop to a lower energy level, transferring its energy to that field. A photon created in this manner has the same phase, frequency, polarization, and...

spectra

Electromagnetic spectrum

The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. The "electromagnetic spectrum" of an object is the characteristic distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted or absorbed by that particular object....

that have characteristic spectral peaks, Cherenkov radiation is continuous. Around the visible spectrum, the relative intensity per unit frequency is approximately proportional to the frequency. That is, higher frequencies (shorter wavelength

Wavelength

In physics, the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of the wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.It is usually determined by considering the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase, such as crests, troughs, or zero crossings, and is a...

s) are more intense in Cherenkov radiation. This is why visible Cherenkov radiation is observed to be brilliant blue. In fact, most Cherenkov radiation is in the ultraviolet

Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV...

spectrum—it is only with sufficiently accelerated charges that it even becomes visible; the sensitivity of the human eye peaks at green, and is very low in the violet portion of the spectrum.

There is a cut-off frequency above which the equation

cannot be satisfied. Since the refractive index

Refractive index

is a function of frequency (and hence wavelength), the intensity does not continue increasing at ever shorter wavelengths even for ultra-relativistic particles (where v/c

Speed of light

approaches 1). At X-ray

X-ray

X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...

frequencies, the refractive index becomes less than unity (note that in media the phase velocity may exceed c without violating relativity) and hence no X-ray emission (or shorter wavelength emissions such as gamma ray

Gamma ray

Gamma radiation, also known as gamma rays or hyphenated as gamma-rays and denoted as γ, is electromagnetic radiation of high frequency . Gamma rays are usually naturally produced on Earth by decay of high energy states in atomic nuclei...

s) would be observed. However, X-rays can be generated at special frequencies just below those corresponding to core electronic transitions in a material, as the index of refraction is often greater than 1 just below a resonance frequency (see Kramers-Kronig relation

Kramers-Kronig relation

The Kramers–Kronig relations are bidirectional mathematical relations, connecting the real and imaginary parts of any complex function that is analytic in the upper half-plane...

and anomalous dispersion).

As in sonic booms and bow shocks, the angle of the shock cone

Cone (geometry)

A cone is an n-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a base to a point called the apex or vertex. Formally, it is the solid figure formed by the locus of all straight line segments that join the apex to the base...

is directly related to the velocity of the disruption. The Cherenkov angle is zero at the threshold velocity for the emission of Cherenkov radiation. The angle takes on a maximum as the particle speed approaches the speed of light. Hence, observed angles of incidence can be used to compute the direction and speed of a Cherenkov radiation-producing charge.

Cherenkov radiation can be generated in the eye by charged particles hitting the vitreous humour

Vitreous humour

The vitreous humour or vitreous humor is the clear gel that fills the space between the lens and the retina of the eyeball of humans and other vertebrates...

, giving the impression of flashes, as in cosmic ray visual phenomena

Cosmic ray visual phenomena

Cosmic ray visual phenomena, also referred to as phosphenes or "light flashes", are spontaneous flashes of light visually perceived by astronauts outside the magnetosphere of the Earth, such as during the Apollo program. Researchers believe that cosmic rays are responsible for these flashes of...

Detection of labeled biomolecules

Cherenkov radiation is widely used to facilitate the detection of small amounts and low concentrations of biomolecule

Biomolecule

A biomolecule is any molecule that is produced by a living organism, including large polymeric molecules such as proteins, polysaccharides, lipids, and nucleic acids as well as small molecules such as primary metabolites, secondary metabolites, and natural products...

s. Radioactive atoms such as phosphorus-32 are readily introduced into biomolecules by enzymatic and synthetic means and subsequently may be easily detected in small quantities for the purpose of elucidating biological pathways and in characterizing the interaction of biological molecules such as affinity constants and dissociation rates.

Nuclear reactors

Cherenkov radiation is used to detect high-energy charged particles. In pool-type nuclear reactors, the intensity of Cherenkov radiation is related to the frequency of the fission

Nuclear fission

In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts , often producing free neutrons and photons , and releasing a tremendous amount of energy...

events that produce high-energy electrons, and hence is a measure of the intensity of the reaction. Similarly, Cherenkov radiation is used to characterize the remaining radioactivity of spent fuel rods.

Astrophysics experiments

When a high-energy (TeV

TEV

TEV may refer to:* TeV, or teraelectronvolt, a measure of energy* Total Enterprise Value, a financial measure* Total Economic Value, an economic measure* Tobacco etch virus, a plant pathogenic virus of the family Potyviridae....

) gamma photon or cosmic ray

Cosmic ray

Cosmic rays are energetic charged subatomic particles, originating from outer space. They may produce secondary particles that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and surface. The term ray is historical as cosmic rays were thought to be electromagnetic radiation...

interacts with the Earth's atmosphere

Earth's atmosphere

The atmosphere of Earth is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention , and reducing temperature extremes between day and night...

, it may produce an electron-positron

Positron

The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The positron has an electric charge of +1e, a spin of ½, and has the same mass as an electron...

pair

Pair production

Pair production refers to the creation of an elementary particle and its antiparticle, usually from a photon . For example an electron and its antiparticle, the positron, may be created...

with enormous velocities. The Cherenkov radiation from these charged particles is used to determine the source and intensity of the cosmic ray, which is used for example in the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique

IACT

The IACT or Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique is the method whereby very high energy gamma-ray photons in the 50 GeV to 50 TeV range can be detected by ground based telescopes. There are currently four major ground based telescopes including CANGAROO III, MAGIC, HESS and VERITAS...

(IACT

IACT

), by experiments such as VERITAS

VERITAS

VERITAS is a major ground-based gamma-ray observatory with an array of four 12m optical reflectors for gamma-ray astronomy in the GeV - TeV energy range. The telescope design is based on the design of the existing 10m gamma-ray telescope of the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory...

, H.E.S.S., and MAGIC

MAGIC (telescope)

MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes situated at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, at about 2200 m above sea level...

. Similar methods are used in very large neutrino

Neutrino

A neutrino is an electrically neutral, weakly interacting elementary subatomic particle with a half-integer spin, chirality and a disputed but small non-zero mass. It is able to pass through ordinary matter almost unaffected...

detectors, such as the Super-Kamiokande

Super-Kamiokande

Super-Kamiokande is a neutrino observatory which is under Mount Kamioka near the city of Hida, Gifu Prefecture, Japan...

, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO)

Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a neutrino observatory located 6,800 feet underground in Vale Inco's Creighton Mine in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The detector was designed to detect solar neutrinos through their interactions with a large tank of heavy water. The detector turned on in May 1999,...

and IceCube.
In the Pierre Auger Observatory

Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Observatory is an international cosmic ray observatory designed to detect ultra-high-energy cosmic rays: single sub-atomic particles with energies beyond 1020 eV...

and other similar projects tanks filled with water observe the Cherenkov radiation caused by muons, electrons and positrons of particle shower

Particle shower

In particle physics, a shower is a cascade of secondary particles produced as the result of a high-energy particle interacting with dense matter. The incoming particle interacts, producing multiple new particles with lesser energy; each of these then interacts in the same way, a process that...

s which are caused by cosmic rays.

Cherenkov radiation can also be used to determine properties of high-energy astronomical objects that emit gamma rays, such as supernova remnant

Supernova remnant

A supernova remnant is the structure resulting from the explosion of a star in a supernova. The supernova remnant is bounded by an expanding shock wave, and consists of ejected material expanding from the explosion, and the interstellar material it sweeps up and shocks along the way.There are two...

s and blazar

Blazar

A blazar is a very compact quasar associated with a presumed supermassive black hole at the center of an active, giant elliptical galaxy...

s. This is done by projects such as STACEE

STACEE

The Solar Tower Atmospheric Cherenkov Effect Experiment , is a gamma ray detector located near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Observations with STACEE began in October 2001 and concluded in June 2007. Gamma rays were observed from objects such as the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant, and Markarian 421,...

, a gamma ray detector in New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

Particle physics experiments

Cherenkov radiation is commonly used in experimental particle physics

Particle physics

for particle identification. One could measure (or put limits on) the velocity

Velocity

In physics, velocity is speed in a given direction. Speed describes only how fast an object is moving, whereas velocity gives both the speed and direction of the object's motion. To have a constant velocity, an object must have a constant speed and motion in a constant direction. Constant ...

of an electrically charged elementary particle by the properties of the Cherenkov light it emits in a certain medium. If the momentum

Momentum

In classical mechanics, linear momentum or translational momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object...

of the particle is measured independently, one could compute the mass

Mass

Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...

of the particle by its momentum and velocity (see four-momentum

Four-momentum

In special relativity, four-momentum is the generalization of the classical three-dimensional momentum to four-dimensional spacetime. Momentum is a vector in three dimensions; similarly four-momentum is a four-vector in spacetime...

), and hence identify the particle.

The simplest type of particle identification device based on a Cherenkov radiation technique is the threshold counter, which gives an answer as to whether the velocity of a charged particle is lower or higher than a certain value (

, where

is the speed of light

Speed of light

, and

is the refractive index

Refractive index

of the medium) by looking at whether this particle does or does not emit Cherenkov light in a certain medium. Knowing particle momentum, one can separate particles lighter than a certain threshold from those heavier than the threshold.

The most advanced type of a detector is the RICH, or ring imaging Cherenkov detector

Ring imaging Cherenkov detector

A Ring Imaging Cherenkov detector is a particle detector that can determine the velocity, v , of a charged particle. This is done by an indirect measurement of the Cherenkov angle, \theta_c , i.e. the angle between the emitted Čerenkov radiation and the particle path...

, developed in the 1980s. In a RICH detector, a cone of Cherenkov light is produced when a high speed charged particle traverses a suitable gaseous or liquid medium, often called radiator. This light cone is detected on a position sensitive planar photon detector, which allows reconstructing a ring or disc, the radius of which is a measure for the Cherenkov emission angle. Both focusing and proximity-focusing detectors are in use. In a focusing RICH detector, the photons are collected by a spherical mirror and focused onto the photon detector placed at the focal plane. The result is a circle with a radius independent of the emission point along the particle track. This scheme is suitable for low refractive index radiators—i.e. gases—due to the larger radiator length needed to create enough photons. In the more compact proximity-focusing design, a thin radiator volume emits a cone of Cherenkov light which traverses a small distance—the proximity gap—and is detected on the photon detector plane. The image is a ring of light, the radius of which is defined by the Cherenkov emission angle and the proximity gap. The ring thickness is determined by the thickness of the radiator. An example of a proximity gap RICH detector is the High Momentum Particle Identification Detector (HMPID), a detector currently under construction for ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment

A Large Ion Collider Experiment

ALICE is one of the six detector experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The other five are: ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, LHCb, and LHCf. ALICE is optimized to study heavy ion collisions. Pb-Pb nuclei collisions will be studied at a centre of mass energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon...

), one of the six experiments at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature....

) at CERN

CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...

External links

Animation about the cherenkov effect

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Physical origin

Reverse Cherenkov effect

Characteristics

Detection of labeled biomolecules

Nuclear reactors

Astrophysics experiments

Particle physics experiments

See also

External links