The question is as follows: when you have any kind of detector for muons you just take measurements and you say, for example, the number for the muon flux but how you're sure that all particles passing the detector (like scintillating bars) are all muons?
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1$\begingroup$ Almost every paper by a group using one of these detectors will have a section about how they are doing event discrimination. $\endgroup$– Connor BehanCommented Jun 10 at 1:51
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$\begingroup$ Any suggestions to read? $\endgroup$– Francisco SantiagoCommented Jun 10 at 2:10
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1$\begingroup$ @FranciscoSantiago The CMS muon detector is described here. This is not a detailed description, but if you think this looks interesting it shouldn't be hard to find more detailed descriptions of the detector. $\endgroup$– John RennieCommented Jun 10 at 7:26
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1 Answer
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You can tell by how its path curves in a magnetic field. That curvature is very explicitly governed by its charge-to-mass ratio, which for every known fundamental particle is pretty much unique. A muon curves very differently when subjected to a magnetic field as opposed to a proton or electron or neutron or pion or tauon or neutrino. Of course, this method isn't universally used; most papers detail how exactly they discriminate particle detection events.
For uncharged particles, it's more difficult, but the only uncharged fundamental particles are some bosons and neutrinos. The latter hardly interact at all, so we build detectors specifically designed to absorb them and nothing else, and proving you've detected the former is either very easy (in the case of photons) or Nobel Prize-winning material (Higgs boson, gluon, still waiting on the graviton).
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$\begingroup$ Thanks for you answer, do you have or know about any article where it's detailed the discrimination event? Particularly if it's not used any statistics (or the less posible) for it? $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 10 at 2:08
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$\begingroup$ @FranciscoSantiago This paper, arxiv.org/abs/1207.7214, details the identification of the Higgs boson in the LHC ATLAS detector; they have some sections on how the detector works and how they discriminate against background noise (see "The ATLAS detector", "Signal and background simulation samples", "Event selection", "Background estimation", "Systematic uncertainties", "Event categorisation"). $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 10 at 2:32