Test of spatial resolution and trigger efficiency of a combined Thin Gap and Fast Drift Tube Chambers for high-luminosity LHC upgrades

The forthcoming luminosity upgrade of LHC to super-LHC (sLHC) will increase the expected background rate in the forward region of the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer by approximately the factor of five. Some of the present Muon Spectrometer components will fail to cope with these high rates and will have to be replaced. The results of a test of a device consisting of Thin Gap Chambers (TGC) and a fast small-diameter Muon Drift Tube Chamber (sMDT) using the 180 GeV/c muons at the SPS-H8 muon beam at CERN are presented. The goal of the test was to study the combined TGC-sMDT system as tracking and triggering device in the ATLAS muon spectrometer after high-luminosity upgrades of the LHC. The analysis of the recorded data shows a very good correlation between the TGC and sMDT track position and inclination. This technology offers the combination of trigger and tracking and has good angular and spatial resolutions. The angular resolution is 0.4 mrad for each system individually. For the spatial resolution, the width of the track residual between TGC and sMDT is 104 μm at zero degree impact angle.