Small-pad Resistive Micromegas for Operation at Very High Rates

Resistive Micromegas detectors have proved to be suitable for precision tracking in dense particle rate environment up to few kHz/cm$^2$. Rate capability up to few MHz/cm$^2$ and low occupancy can be achieved by using few mm$^2$ readout pads. Such a rate capability will be required in upgrades of forward muon detectors of LHC experiments as well as in experiments at future colliders.We present the development of resistive micromegas with O(mm$^2$) pad readout aiming at precision tracking in high rate environment without efficiency loss up to several MHz/cm$^2$. A first small-pad prototype has been designed, constructed and tested. It consists of a matrix of 48x16 pads. Each pad has rectangular shape with a pitch of 1 and 3 mm in the two coordinates. The active surface is 4.8x4.8 cm$^2$ with a total number of 768 channels.Characterization and performance studies of the detector have been carried out by means of radioactive sources, high irradiation X-Rays and test beam. The results will be presented, along with recent developments aiming at the construction of fully scalable, thousands-channels small-pad detectors.