Time-projection chambers

Abstract

Since its invention only ten years ago, the time‐projection chamber has proven so useful as a particle detector that some are calling it the “bubble chamber” of the 1980s and 1990s. The enormous appeal of this new detector stems from its ability not only to reconstruct the trajectories of charged particles in three dimensions, but also to identify particles by measuring the ionization energy that they deposit along their tracks. The time‐projection chamber can make these measurements over a large solid angle and in very crowded environments where many tracks are created at the same time.