The monitored drift tube (MDT) chambers for the muon precision tracking in the ATLAS spectrometer

The ATLAS muon spectrometer has been designed to exploit the very wide range of the physics potentialities at LHC. One of the very ambitious goal to be achieved is the precise measurement of the muon tracks, up to very high momenta, at luminosity L>or=10/sup 34/ cm/sup -2/ s/sup -1/. To attain the goal, a system of three large superconducting air core toroid magnets, instrumented with very high precision tracking chambers, has been adopted. The high precision of the MDT tracking chambers is achieved through a rigorous assembly procedure in which a very precise jig is used. The various aspects of the system and the MDT chamber assembly procedure are described in the following. (12 refs).