Investigating the Digital Preservation of Raw Bubble Chamber Data

by Andrew Stephen Chisholm (University of Birmingham (GB))

Wednesday 11 Jun 2025, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/London

Small Lecture Theatre (Poynting)

Many of the defining advances in particle physics during the mid twentieth century were made at bubble chamber experiments. The particle physics group of the University of Birmingham have a rich history of involvement in bubble chamber experiments dating back to the 1950s. As part of this legacy, the group hold an extensive collection of photographic film recorded by experiments at the CERN 2m Hydrogen Bubble Chamber (HBC), which operated between 1965 and 1976. These photographic records of particle interactions in the chamber volume represented the primary raw data format of such experiments, from which particle trajectories and momenta were then reconstructed from careful measurements of the film. Remarkably, nearly 60 years since the chamber was commissioned, the basic technical information required to reconstruct particle interactions from measurements of 2m HBC film has been comprehensively preserved by CERN and is publicly available. 

The bulk of the Birmingham collection represents film from the T209 experiment, which involved an exposure of the 2m HBC to an 8.25 GeV/c K- beam. The collection comprises around 10,000 beam exposures, a dataset large enough to open a wide variety of educational and scientific opportunities, were the data to be digitised and sufficiently understood.

This talk will describe an effort to digitally preserve this dataset, towards the establishment of a unique educational resource and the potential revival its scientific exploitation.