Magnetic horn
Encyclopedia
A magnetic horn or neutrino horn is a device used in the production of neutrino
beams. It focuses charged particles that will decay into neutrinos so that the resulting neutrino beam is as narrow as possible.
The neutrinos themselves cannot be focused with electric or magnetic fields because they are electrically neutral. Instead, one or more magnetic horns can be used to focus the secondary particles. The shape of the horn and strength of the magnetic field can be tuned to select a range of particle energies that are to be best focused. In this way, the resulting neutrino beam is both geometrically focused and given a chosen range of energies. Note however that the decays of the secondary hadrons still impart some random direction to the neutrinos, so the beam will always spread to some degree no matter how well the horn works.
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...
beams. It focuses charged particles that will decay into neutrinos so that the resulting neutrino beam is as narrow as possible.
Description
Production of a neutrino beam generally involves directing protons onto a fixed target of solid material. The protons interact strongly with the nuclei in the target, producing a variety of secondary hadrons. The proton beam energy and target material are chosen so that these hadrons are mostly pions and kaons. Both of these particles' decays produce neutrinos. However, without a neutrino horn, the resulting neutrino beam is very wide, both geometrically and in energy spread. This is because the secondary particles are produced at a variety of angles and energies and then when they decay, the neutrinos are again produced at a variety of angles and energies.The neutrinos themselves cannot be focused with electric or magnetic fields because they are electrically neutral. Instead, one or more magnetic horns can be used to focus the secondary particles. The shape of the horn and strength of the magnetic field can be tuned to select a range of particle energies that are to be best focused. In this way, the resulting neutrino beam is both geometrically focused and given a chosen range of energies. Note however that the decays of the secondary hadrons still impart some random direction to the neutrinos, so the beam will always spread to some degree no matter how well the horn works.
Notable uses
- The NuMINuMINeutrinos at the Main Injector, or NuMI, is a project at Fermilab which creates an intense beam of neutrinos aimed towards the Soudan Mine for use by several particle physics experiments. , the MINOS and MINERνA experiments use the NuMI beam...
beam, used by the MINOSMINOSMINOS is a particle physics experiment designed to study the phenomena of neutrino oscillations, first discovered by a Super-Kamiokande experiment in 1998...
experiment, uses 2 magnetic horns to produce a 3GeVGEVGEV or GeV may stand for:*GeV or gigaelectronvolt, a unit of energy equal to billion electron volts*GEV or Grid Enabled Vehicle that is fully or partially powered by the electric grid, see plug-in electric vehicle...
muon neutrino beam. - The GargamelleGargamelleGargamelle was a giant bubble chamber detector at CERN, designed mainly for the detection of neutrino interactions. Built in France, with a diameter of nearly 2 meters and 4.8 meters in length, Gargamelle held nearly 12 cubic meters of freon...
bubble chamber, in which the first neutral currentNeutral currentWeak neutral current interactions are one of the ways in which subatomic particles can interact by means of the weak force. These interactions are mediated by the boson...
reactions were observed, used a 20GeV muon anti-neutrino beam focused by a single horn.