Schwartz received the Nobel Prize for research he and his Columbia
colleagues Lederman and Steinberger performed at Brookhaven National
Laboratory in 1960-62. Neutrinos almost never interact with matter,
and consequently it had been extremely difficult to detect them in laboratory
research. (It was estimated that from a sample of 10 billion neutrinos
traveling through the Earth, only one neutrino would interact with a
particle of matter during the entire passage.) Acting on Schwartz's
suggestion, the three researchers devised a way to increase the statistical
probability of neutrino interactions by producing a beam consisting
of hundreds of billions of neutrinos and sending the beam through a
detector of solid matter. To achieve this, the scientists used a particle
accelerator to generate a stream of high-energy protons, which were
then fired at a target made of the metal beryllium. The bombardment
produced a stream of different particles, including those called pions
(pi mesons) that, as they traveled, decayed into muons (mu mesons) and
neutrinos. The stream of particles exiting from the beryllium target
then passed through a steel barrier 13.4 m (44 feet) thick that filtered
out all other particles except neutrinos. This pure neutrino beam subsequently
entered a large aluminum detector in which a few neutrinos interacted
with the aluminum atoms. In analyzing these interactions, the three
physicists discovered a new type of neutrino, which came to be known
as the muon neutrino .
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