The idea is that you need to quickly identify ("tag") interesting reactions out of the millions happening, so there are a set of increasingly stringent but slower filters that select events. Muons are good because they are easy to identify, then you look back at where they came from and see what other things were created. Typically mesons (and other hadrons) create a "shower" of particles and by adding upp all their energies you can estimate what particle they came from.
But all that stuff is mostly repressed from my memory. I decided that particle physics wasn't for me after that summer... ;-)
The idea is that you need to quickly identify ("tag") interesting reactions out of the millions happening, so there are a set of increasingly stringent but slower filters that select events. Muons are good because they are easy to identify, then you look back at where they came from and see what other things were created. Typically mesons (and other hadrons) create a "shower" of particles and by adding upp all their energies you can estimate what particle they came from.
But all that stuff is mostly repressed from my memory. I decided that particle physics wasn't for me after that summer... ;-)