An experiment to study cosmic ray extensive air showers of size exceeding 3.107 particles has been constructed on the Yorkshire Moors at Haverah Park, near Harrogate. The preliminary operation and results from this experiment are described. The extensive air showers are recorded by a triangular array of water Cerenkov detectors spaced at distances of 500m from a control detector. During the setting up of the main array, the prototype Cerenkov detector units were employed in two subsidiary experiments. The first of these, described in Chapters 2 and 3, consisted of a small array of single basic detector units (single water-tanks). This array was the same shape as the large array but had an array spacing of 6m, and was used to study the distribution of energy in the electron-photon component of extensive air showers at distances within 12m of the shower axis. The second experiment, which is described in Chapter 4, employed different combinations of the basic detector unit to investigate the density spectrum at very low densities. The results yielded information on the character of very small air showers, and indicated the manner in which the transition in density spectrum contributions from single particles to extensive air showers takes place. Finally, the preliminary results of the main 500m array are presented and discussed, particularly with relation to determining the lateral distribution of the Cerenkov detector response and the problem of ascertaining the absolute shower size. A possible normalisation procedure applicable to all zenith angles is suggested. The initial results on the shower absorption, size spectrum and shower front curvature are given and compared with those of other workers. A number of suggestions for future work have been listed and the feasibility of an array to study even larger showers has been investigated.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:602239 |
| Date | January 1963 |
| Creators | Lillicrap, Stephen Claude |
| Publisher | Imperial College London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/13383 |
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