Design and construction of integrated small-diameter drift tube and thin-gap resistive plate chambers for the phase-1 upgrade of the ATLAS muon spectrometer

In the long shutdown for the Phase-1 upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2019–2020, 16 new integrated muon tracking and trigger chambers will be installed at the ends of the toroid magnet coils in the small azimuthal sectors of the inner barrel layer (BIS) of the ATLAS muon spectrometer in order to improve the trigger selectivity and fake trigger suppression in the transition region 1.0<|η|<1.3 between the barrel part and the endcaps. The new muon detectors consist of a small-diameter muon drift tube (sMDT) precision tracking chamber with 15 mm tube diameter and a pair of thin-gap RPC chambers with 1 mm gas gap width. The new integrated chamber modules (labeled BIS 78) are currently under construction and will replace the present BIS 7 and 8 MDT tracking chambers with 30 mm diameter drift tubes. The project is the pilot phase for the complete replacement of the small barrel inner layer MDT chambers with the new integrated tracking and trigger detectors in the ATLAS Phase-2 upgrade in 2024–2026 in order to increase the barrel first-level muon trigger coverage and efficiency at the high luminosities at HL-LHC. The sMDT chambers have been chosen to make room for the new trigger chambers and because of their eight times higher rate capability than MDT chambers. The new thin-gap RPC chambers have about 15 times lower avalanche charges and correspondingly increased lifetime and rate capability at HL-LHC and will be operated in coincidence with the endcap trigger chambers. They consist of a triplet of gas gaps which has to be very thin as well and which is supported by a light-weight aluminum structure which is interleaved with the sMDT chamber supports.