Particle detectors, as a technique, encompass the ensemble of methods and instrumentation used to register, localize, and characterize ionizing particles through their interactions with matter. These techniques exploit processes such as ionization, scintillation, Cherenkov radiation, and semiconductor charge collection to convert particle passage into measurable electrical or optical signals. Detector techniques include tracking (e.g., gaseous wire chambers, silicon strip and pixel detectors), calorimetry (sampling and homogeneous calorimeters for energy measurement), and time-of-flight methods for velocity determination, often integrated in complex, layered systems enabling precise reconstruction of particle trajectories, momenta, identities, and interaction vertices in nuclear, particle, and astroparticle physics experiments.
Proton beams are not only used in sophisticated nuclear physics experiments. Today, they are becoming increasingly popular in radiotherapy, where they are an irreplaceable tool for destroying cancer cells. Doctors and physicists ...
General Physics
May 1, 2026
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An international research team has achieved an important milestone for astrophysics at GSI/FAIR in Darmstadt: In the CRYRING@ESR storage ring, scientists were able to measure nuclear reactions at extremely low energies for ...
General Physics
Apr 30, 2026
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Particle accelerators such as those at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva are typically highly complex large-scale devices. In these ring-shaped facilities, which are often several kilometers ...
Plasma Physics
Apr 30, 2026
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Some innovations in physics come from entirely new technologies, others from fresh theoretical insights. Others still take shape by bringing together existing tools in new ways, working out how to combine them to outperform ...
General Physics
Apr 24, 2026
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One of the biggest open questions in particle physics today is how the Higgs boson interacts with itself. This "self-coupling" could help explain the evolution of the early universe and the mechanism that gives mass to elementary ...
General Physics
Apr 22, 2026
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Tens of kilometers above Earth's surface, high-energy particles from outer space constantly strike the atmosphere, creating showers of energetic secondary particles that rain down from the sky. Approximately one of these ...
General Physics
Apr 21, 2026
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According to our current understanding of the universe, quarks are fundamental, point-like particles: basic building blocks that are not made up of smaller particles. A recent paper from the CMS Collaboration describes how ...
General Physics
Apr 16, 2026
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Dark matter is believed to make up a large fraction of the matter in the universe, yet its true nature remains unknown. Most past experiments have focused on heavier dark matter candidates, while much lighter dark matter, ...
Astronomy
Apr 14, 2026
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A new type of radiofrequency trap can capture particles with extremely different requirements and could theoretically hold both types of particles at the same time. Researchers in the group of Professor Dmitry Budker from ...
General Physics
Apr 10, 2026
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Deep underground in a Canadian mine, a refrigerator nearly 1,000 times colder than outer space has just reached its target temperature—a milestone that brings scientists one step closer to potentially detecting dark matter, ...
General Physics
Apr 10, 2026
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