Measurements of the drift velocity using a small gas chamber for monitoring of the CMS muon system

This diploma thesis presents measurements of the drift velocity of electrons in gas. A small gas detector (VDC1 ) is used. This chamber is intended for measurement and monitoring of the drift velocity in the gas of the muon chambers of the gas detector system in the barrel area of the CMS-detector2 at the European Research Center for Particle Physics CERN near Geneva. The drift velocity is, together with the drift time, a key parameter for measurements with drift chambers. The aim of this thesis is to perform test measurements to determine parameters of the chamber and also to estimate systematic errors. Beside the drift velocity, further parameters of the gas like the pressure and the temperature are measured and accounted for. For the further work with the VDCs, analysis software has been created which is used for the analysis of the measurements. Parallel to this work, necessary improvements, e.g. for the high voltage robustness, were also implemented and tested. In addition, studies and test measurements are done to develop a new trigger system based on small semiconductor light detectors.