Tau particle.

Carmen Belloso Marrec.

Introduction.

The Tau particle, also known as Tau lepton or Tauon, appears to be an elementary particle (or building block), which means either it is not made of other subparticles or the required technology to discover these subparticles is not developped yet. A sketch of principal particles and their clasication is shown in gure (1).

Figure 1: Clasication of main particles. Whereas leptons are found individually, quarks are always found in packages, building other particles called hadrons. Whether hadrons made by two quarks are called mesons, the other ones, made of three quarks, are called baryons. All the elementary particles are fermions, which means that th spin is an halfinteger. Fermions behaviour is described by Fermi-Dirac statistics (see equation (1)) and fullls Paulis exclusion principle, that states that no more than one particle will be at the same state with the same quantum numbers. (1) ("i ) 1 + e kB T This is the Fermi-Dirac distribution, where ni is the average number of fermions in a monoparticualr state with energy "i . As baryons are made of three quarks (fermions) they will have half-integer spin and they will be also fermions. However, mesons are made of two quarks so ni = 2 1

they have integer spin, in consequence they are bosons, and the average number of bosons in a monoparticular state with given energy "i follows the Bose-Eistein statistics (equation (2)). (2) ("i ) 1 e kB T Every elementary particle has an antiparticle. The particle and its antiparticle have the same mass and the opposite charge. ni = 1

Interactions.
Matter is built with particles that interact between them. In nature we nd electromagnetic, gravitational, strong and weak interactions but in the range we work with in particles physics, we only nd that electromagnetic, strong and weak ones are relevant. Electromagnetic interaction acts between particles with charge, so that neutral particles do not feel this interaction. For low energy ranges the mean part of electromagnetic interaction is the electrostatic one. The interaction element of matrix for nuclear distances ( r 1 fm) and unitary charges can be taken as hHem i ' 1MeV. The electrostatic potential expresion is Vee (r) = Z1 Z2 c h r

1 where is the ne structure constant, which value is = 137 , Z1 is the charge of the rst interacting particle, Z2 is the charge of the second interacting particle and r is the distance between both particles. Electromagnetic interaction is attractive or repulsive depending on the sign of charges Z1 and Z2 . Strong interaction is felt by hadrons, is the most powerful interaction in the nuclear range. The interaction matrix element value (for r 1fm) is hHs i ' 100MeV and the potential can be modeled by a semi nite squarre well or by the more accurate model of Yukawa (gure (2)).

Figure 2: Model of semi nite squarre well (left) and Yukawas potential (right). Weak interaction has the shortest range between all the interactions. the matrix element of interaction can be approximated to hHw i ' 10 4 MeV for a volume 1fm3 . Weak interaction is modeled in Fermis theory as Hw = GF
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(~ r ) ( + + )

Leptons.

Leptons are clasied in two types: electron-like leptons (with charge) and neutral leptons or neutrinos (without charge). Both types of leptons do not feel the strong interaction but the weak one, electron-like leptons also undergo electromagnetic interaction. There are six kind of leptons, known as avours and they are subclasied in three generations with increasing masses. In each generation there are a electron-like lepton and a neutrino. Eventually, each lepton has an antilepton. In gure (3) we see a clasication of leptons.

Figure 3: Leptons clasication. Each generation of leptons has asociated a avor. It is thought that neutrinos are not completely belonging to a avor but there are oscillations between avors, so that if we have a bean of electron neutrinos, when we collect the bean after a period of time, we are going to collect also muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos. The change of neutrino states was postulated when a bean of neutrinos from the sun was collected; although all of them were supposed to be electron neutrinos, other neutrinos were detected.

Brief chronology.
Electrons are the best known leptons beacuse they are stable leptons while muons and tau particles decay and because a high level of energy is required to create non electronic leptons, among other reasons. Therefore the electron was the rst discovered lepton by J.J. Thomson in 1897. In 1936 Carl D. Anderson discovered a meson that acted like an electron, later, in 1947 the lepton concept was introduced and in 1948 Leon Rosenfeld xed the Anderson missunderstandig. Even if the new particle was heavier than the electron it did not feel the strong interaction and acted like the well known lepton, so Rosenfeld concluded that it was the same kind of particle than the electron: the muon is a lepton. In 1930 Wolfgang Pauli was postuled to explain certain characteristics of beta decay. It was eventually observed in the CowanReines

neutrino experiment conducted by Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines in 1956. In 1962 Leon M. Lenderman discovered the muon neutrino with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger. The discovery of the tau particle had to wait until 1974, when Martin Lewis Perl achieved to detect some reactions that only could exist if a heavier than muon leepton existed.

Leptonic number.
There is a number that characterizes the nature od the leptons, that is the leptonic number. There are three types of leptonic numbers: the electronic, the muonic and the tauonic one. Their values are recovered in the table (2) Le 1 -1 0 0 0 0 Le 0 0 1 -1 0 0 Le 0 0 0 0 1 -1

e , e+ , , + , , +,

e e

Table 1: Leptonic numbers. For no leptonic particles the leptonic number is 0. There is no evidence ov leptonic number violation, but if the neutrinos mass is dierent from zero this violation could be produced.

Tau discovery.

In 1975 Martin Lewis Perl discovered the tau particle with a group of researchers from the Stanford Accelerator Center and from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The initial purpose of the research included the measurement of hadrons form factors throught the electron-positron annihilation into hadronsantihadrons pairs. The title of the experiment was An Experimental Survey of Positron- Electron Annihilation into Multiparticle Final States in The Center of Mass Energy Range 2GeV to 5GeV . The last purpose of this experiment (heavy lepton searches) was considered as a joke by most of the physicist. However Martin Perl was nding a heavier lepton than muon because in reactions like the following one an amount of energy is lost e+ + e ! e + For a rst analysis the Stanford Positron Electron Asymmetric Rings (SPEAR) was used, it was taking a large amount of data from the spring of 1973 through the spring of 1974 and allowed a maximum beam energy of about 4.8 GeV in

the center of mass. All the 4.8 Gev generated data gave the the table shown in gure (4), where one of the most interesting data has been highlined.

Figure 4: Events obteined in the experiment. A problem was that twenty-four events with an electron and a muon but no photons could not be explained by conventional backgrounds. The detector used was called Mark I and it was a general purpose detector and it was not good enough to detect muons properly and there were not money to buy a better muon identication system. The rst explanation was given by Perl: procces which could give a muon, an electron and no other observed particles could occur through hadron misidentication, and it was very probable in the Mark I detector.

Figure 5: The general purpose detector Mark I in 1974. The main way of estimating possible backgrounds was to overestimate the background by assuming that there were not anomalous sources of leptons , and to use the number of identied electrons an muons in the data as a mesure of the misidentication probability. After doing some estimations, Perl came to the conclusion that the average misidentication to electrons and muons was 18% and 20% respectively. In conclusion, the expectred background was 4.7 events or 7 events as maximum. The probability of these numbers uctuating to 24 is less than one in a million. There was no way in which the events could be explained by backgrounds. There were two possible sources of these events, either a boson decaying by a two - body decay e+ + e ! B + + M B B + ! e+ + B ! +

or a lepton decaying by a three-body decay

e+ + e ! L+ + L 8

Perl studied the momentum distribution of the 48 leptons from the 24 events at 4.8 GeV, as we see in gure (6) the correct hypothesis can not be told.

L+ ! e+ + +

L ! + +

Figure 6: Momentum spectrum of leptons from the original 24 e events from 4.8 GeV data. The solid and dashed curves represent the expectation of a 1.9 GeV/c2 lepton and a 2.0 GeV/c2 meson respectively. Some events that appeared to come from the production of a new particle in the mass range 1.6 to 2.0 GeV/c2 were found, but it was impossible to determinate whether the particle was a lepton or a boson. Supposing a systematic mistake in the misidentications was not made, a question had to be answered: what was the nature of the particles that was produced? As possible sources of the events ended releasing a muon, in order to understand the procces, an improval of the muon detector was required. An additional absorbed was placed on the top of the detector, called the muon tower as it is shown in gure (7).

Figure 7: The detector MArk I after the addition of the muon tower. As an iron detector (was would be used normally) was too expensive and it would mean a lot of time, barium-loaded concrete pads were used, that had half the density of iron. There were some e events in which muon penetrated at least half of the muon tower even a few of them penetrated all the trhee absorbers (see gure(8)).

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Figure 8: An eevent in which the muon penetrates both layers of the muon tower. From summer of 1975 to winter of 1975, the data set had grown from 86 events of which 22 were estimated to be background to 139 events with 34 of them backgound in the new detector which had lower misidentication probabilities. New momentum spectrums were drawn (gure (9))

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Figure 9: Left: New momentum spectrums given by Mark I detector with the muon tower for three dierent beans. The solid curve represents the expectation of a 1.8 GeV(c2 lepton, The dashed and dot-dashed curves represent the expectations from a 1.8 GeV(c2 boson with spin 0 and spin 1, helicity 0 respectively. Right: On this page of his logbook, Perl plotted the curves youd expect for a three-body decay and two dierent kinds of two-body decays. When Perl looked at where his data points fell, he was convinced that he had found what he soughtthree-body decay indicating evidence of the tau lepton because distributions were correct for a three-body decay but unacceptable for any form of a two-body decay. After concluding there was a three-body decay, it was accepted that they had to nd two missing particles in each decay. These particles could be photons, neutral kaons or charged particles. Comparing these particles with e events researchers could determine an upper limit on the number of anomalous e events which had missing hadrons or photons was 39%. The conclusion was that missing particles had to be neutrinos. Thus, each decay had to hace a lepton and two missing neutrinos. The only particle with this signature was a heavy lepton. A lead-glass wall was added to the Mark I (see gure (10)) and that provided a better electron identication and it gave experimental conrmation of previous conclusions.

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Figure 10: Mark I with the lead-glass wall added. The mass of the particle was measured three ways: from a pseudo-transverse momentum, from the acoplanarity angles, and from the inclusive momentum spectrum. The value obtained was 1.9 0.1 GeV. The best thing about that fact was that they would be consistent only if the hypothesis was right. Finally the fact that the e cross section is proportional to the square of the leptonic branching ratio while the inclusive muon cross section in linearly dependent on it was used to mesure the total cross section for the production of tau particles. The result was a R (the form factor squared) value of 0.90.4, that agrees with the notion that tau particle is a point particle Until 1977 the new particle (now we know it is a heavy lepton) was called U from unknown particle. In March 1977 Martin Perl introduced the nowadays name of the particle. They want to give to the particle a Greek name in analogy with the , but only and were avalaible. As was the rst letter of the Greek word for third, this symbol was chosen, because it did reference to the third generation lepton which the tau lepton belongs to.

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Tau properties

Tau particle has a greater mass (m( )=1776.86 MeV/c2 ) than the rest of the leptons but also than some hadrons like pions (m( + )=139.57018 MeV/c2 ), protons (m(p)=938.272013 MeV/c2 ), rho meson (m()=775.45 MeV/c2 )... Therefore this particle decays to give other leptons or hadrons. Most common decay proccesses of are: !e + e + ! + + ! + ! + (17.4%) (17.6%) (10.1%) (21.8%)

As we saw previously, the characteristic number of lepton are leptonic numbers and more especically, the characteristic numer of tau lepton is tauonic leptonic number L , which value is 1 for tau and tau neutrino, -1 for their antiparticles and 0 for the rest of them. Other quantum numbers of tau particle are : Charge: q( )=-1, q( + )=1, q( )=0, q( )=0. Barionic number: B( )=B( + )=B( )=B( )=0 Strangeness: S( )=S( + )=S( )=S( )=0

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Figure 11: Topology of e + e ! hadrons.

+ + production decays to l + l + +

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References
[1] Yorikiyo Nagashima. Elemetary Particle Physics. Volume 1: Quantum Fields Theory and PArticles. Ed. Witey-Vch. [2] J. Beringer et al. (Particle Data Group). The Review of Particle Physics. pdg.lbl.gov . [3] Gary J. Feldman. The Discovery of the , 1975-1977: A Tale of Three Papers. Department of Physics Harvard Universiv Cambridge, MA 02138. A Tale of Three Papers. [4] Logbook of the lepton. Simmetry: Dimensions Of Particle Physics [5] Joaqun Gomez Camacho. Fsica de Partculas en tres crditos.

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