Abstract
IT has been pointed out recently by Bhabha, Carmichael and Chou1 that a meson may produce a large cosmic ray shower by knocking on an atomic electron in a close collision; this electron then produces a shower by the ordinary cascade process. Previously, Bhabha2 had come to the conclusion that large knock-on showers are comparatively unimportant; but he had based his argument on the assumption that the scattering of mesons by electrons could be described by the Dirac relativistic theory. However, Massey and Corben3 have shown that the effect of the spin of the meson is greatly to increase the scattering for high energies of the incident meson and the knocked-on electron. Using Massey and Corben's formula, Bhabha, Carmichael and Chou have shown that the experimental results of Carmichael and Chou4 can be reasonably well explained, whereas the previous theory predicted too few large showers.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bhabha, Carmichael and Chou, Proc. Indian Acad., A, 10, 221 (1939).
Bhabha, Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 164, 257 (1938).
Massey and Corben, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc., 35, 463 (1939).
Carmichael and Chou, NATURE, 144, 325 (1939).
Kemmer, Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 173, 91 (1939).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
WILSON, A., BOOTH, F. Large Cosmic Ray Showers and Mesons. Nature 145, 103–104 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145103a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145103a0
- Springer Nature Limited