Development of gas micro-strip chambers for high rate radiation detection and tracking

Gas Micro-Strip Chambers (GMSC) are a promising high-rate, high resolution position detector suited for use in high luminosity hadron collider experiments, as general purpose tracker or to improve the performances of pre-shower counters, transition radiation and inner muon detectors. Large GMSC arrays have been included in proposed LHC and SSC experimental setups. The operating characteristics of GMSC make their use very attractive also for detectors at tau/charm/beauty factories, as well as for synchrotron radiation facilities and for medical applications. At the present state of the art, some problems limiting the usefulness of microstrip chambers are the observed gain changes due to charging up of the support, possible long-term degradation due to ageing, limited sizes imposed by fabrication technologies and unavailability of dedicated high-speed, high-density readout electronics. Limited experience exists of operation of GMSC in real experimental conditions, and little if anything is known about performances in detecting inclined tracks and operation in strong magnetic fields. The present R&D proposal intends to address these issues, namely: -Tests of different substrata -Optimization of thin detectors for transition radiation -Study of operation in a wide range of experimental conditions (including magnetic fields) -Optimization of gas and materials to prevent ageing, in collaboration with RD-10 -Development with industry of technologies for large size GMSC -Development of a dedicated readout electronics, based on the analog switching memory chip developed by RD-2.