Aging studies of resistive bulk Micromegas chambers for the ATLAS muon spectrometer upgrade

A long-term operation study is presented as a probe of the aging properties of two bulk-resistive Micromegas chambers installed at the GIF$^{++}$ Gamma Irradiation Facility at CERN. Trends in the instantaneous chamber current, recorded over $\approx$ 500 days of sustained exposure to the GIF$^{++}$ high intensity photon source, are analysed as a function of time in order to identify any signs of detector aging. As part of the study, additional variations in the current due to the changing external conditions of the chambers must be corrected for in order to isolate any aging effects. These include the changing chamber positions with respect to the photon source and the temperature and pressure fluctuations of the detector gas medium. Due to a number of subsets of the total irradiation period in which the exact detector positions are unknown, the aging study at the present time remains inconclusive. As a result, an alternative long-term aging study utilising the instantaneous chamber dark currents is suggested. Preliminary results from the analysis of the dark currents show no indications of detector aging.