Electron Tubes to supply 11,000 PMTs for particle detection
Construction will take place in France over the next 18 months of a very large detector consisting of 11,000 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) furnished by Electron Tubes (Ruislip, England). The device will then be shipped to the Stanford University (Stanford, CA) Linear Accelerator Center for use in the BaBar project to study properties of particles produced from the decay of b and anti-b mesons. This research aims at better understanding of the asymmetry between matter and antimatter. The detector works when these charged particles generate Cherenkov radiation in quart¥bars. The radiation exits into pure water, which disperses the radiation into a wide-angle cone; the PMTs immersed in the water will detect it. The angle of the emission enables the particles to be characterized. For this application, the PMTs use water-resistant glass that must retain performance over the ten-year life of the experiment starting in 1999.