Ion backflow studies with a triple-GEM stack with increasing hole pitch

Gas Electron Multipliers have undergone a very consistent development since their invention in 1997. Their production procedures have been tuned in such a way that nowadays it is possible to produce foils with areas of the order of the square meter that can operate at a reasonable gain, uniform over large areas and with a good stability in what concerns electrical discharges. For the 3rd run of LHC, they will be included in the CMS and ALICE experiments after significant upgrades of the detectors, confirming that these structures are suitable for very large experiments. In the special case of Time Projection Chambers, the ion backflow and the energy resolution are sensitive issues that must be addressed and the GEM has shown to be able to deal with both of them. In this work, a stack of three GEMs with different pitches has been studied as a possible future approach for ion backflow suppression to be used in TPCs and other detection concepts. With this approach, an ion backflow of 1 % with an energy resolution of 12 % at 5.9 k\eV has been achieved with the detector operating in an Ar/Co (90/10) mixture at a gain of ~ 2000.