Study of fast operating readout electronics and charge interpolation technique for micro cathode strip chambers (MCSC)

Study of the factors limiting the spatial resolution of the MCSC caused by nonlinearity of the cathode-charge interpolation technique has been carried out using a special test arrangement that imitates the charge distribution on the cathode strips as a real MCSC and allows high precision comparison of the coordinates determined by the charge interpolation technique with the known values. We considered a MCSC with a 0.6 mm gap between the anode and the cathode strip planes and with the strip pitch of 0.9 mm. Various charge interpolation algorithms have been tested. It was demonstrated that the systematics errors in the coordinate measurements as low as 5 microns can be achieved, after applying some simple corrections, even with rather coarse sampling, when the coordinates is determined only by 2 or 3 adjacent strips. These results have been obtained with the readout electronics specially designed for fast operation of the MCSCs with the signal peaking time of 20 ns. The equivalent noise charge ss 1600e (r.m.s.) corresponded to ss 15_m (r.m.s.) spatial resolution at the expected gas gain in the MCSC of 5 \Theta 1041