Particle/radiation interaction in matter, principles of detection and review of particle/radiation detectors

The set of lectures will be divided in two parts.

The first part will present the interactions of radiation (charged particle: electrons and hadrons, neutrons and photons) with matter. Concepts used in particle detection will be reviewed: energy losses and ranges of particles in matter, attenuation of radiation in matter, minimum ionizing particle (mip), radiation length, critical energy, Moliere radius, interaction length, energy and position resolutions.

In a second part, several types of particle detectors exploiting these concepts will be described with their modes of operation and applications: semiconductor (silicon) detectors, ionization chambers, wires chambers, scintillators (organic and non-organic) detectors. The principles of calorimetry will be also presented and use of calorimeters in particle physics experiments will be discussed.