Soudan 1

Soudan 1 was a particle detector located in the Soudan Mine in Northern Minnesota, United States. It was a 30 ton iron tracking calorimeter whose primary purpose was to search for proton decay. [ [http://ccdb4fs.kek.jp/cgi-bin/img/allpdf?198203219 "The Soudan Nucleon Decay Program"] , D.S. Ayres, Presented at Workshop on Physics and Astrophysics with a Multikiloton Underground Track-Detector, Rome, Italy, Oct 29-31, 1981] It set a lower limit on the lifetime of the proton of 1.6×10³⁰ years as well as upper limits on the denisity of magnetic monopoles. [ [http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=11-13-2012&FMT=7&DID=752916611&RQT=309&attempt=1 "Results From The Soudan Prototype Proton Decay Experiment"] Ph.D. Thesis, John Eric Bartelt (Minnesota U.), UMI-84-13752, Mar 1984.] It also served as a prototype for the following Soudan 2 and MINOS experiments.

Design and operation

Soudan 1 was installed 590 meters below the surface and brought into routine operation in August 1981 by high-energy physics research groups from the University of Minnesota and Argonne National Laboratory. The detector was a 3×3×2m³ block of taconite-loaded concrete instrumented with 3456 gas proportional tubes. It was surrounded on five sides by a veto shield of solid scintillator, which was completed in October 1981. This allowed events which might otherwise have looked like proton decay, but were actually caused by cosmic rays, to be discarded. It had a total running time of 0.97 years. [cite journal
last = Bartelt
first = J.
coauthors = Courant, H., Heller, K., and Joyce, T., Marshak, M., Peterson, E., Ruddick, K., Shupe, M., Ayres, D. S., Dawson, J. W., Fields, T.,H., May, E. N., Price, L. E.
year = 1987
month = Oct
title = Monopole-flux and proton-decay limits from the Soudan 1 detector
journal = Physical Review D
volume = 36
pages = 1990–2000
doi = 10.1103/PhysRevD.36.1990
url = http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987PhRvD..36.1990B
accessdate = 2007-11-15 ]

See also

* Particle physics
* Proton decay

References