The discrete photodisintegration
Machine of 2024, 2200 meters of altitude. Magnetic field present. Visibility : 40 x 20 cm
We have several explanation possible but the facts are :
- It can’t be an electron, as the density of droplets more belongs to a proton. This exclude also the pair creation effect.
- It can’t be an electron, as if it encounter a nucleus in the kink point, it should have been lose a great amount of energy with Bremsstrahlung, thus we will observe a straggling track after the collision and deflected by the magnetic field.
- We should exclude the rarity of the event where muon are largely deflected by a nucleus, as this is a very rare event and we are not observing any secondary particles of this interaction.
- This is not the decay of a muon into an electron, as the electron would have a large energy and thus make a faint track. The two tracks seems to be the same nature of particle with equivalent energy as we observe the the same density of ionization.
- Could it be an incoming proton colliding into a nitrogen nucleus ?
We can check the previous statement by estimating the kinetic energy that the N nucleus would acquire if struck by a proton. Using energy transfer calculations, for a proton with an initial energy of 2 MeV, the nitrogen nucleus would receive about 500 keV, producing a track roughly 1.7 mm long in matter — almost visible. If the incoming proton had 5 MeV, the N nucleus would make a track about 3 mm long. However, no such recoil track is observed at the kink, which suggests that the proton involved had relatively low energy, the most probable case.
The most plausible explanation is that a neutral incoming particle caused a minor disruption of the nucleus, resulting in the emission of two low-energy protons.