The Outer Tracker Detector of the HERA-B Experiment Part I: Detector

The HERA-B Outer Tracker is a large system of planar drift chambers with about 113000 read-out channels. Its inner part has been designed to be exposed to a particle flux of up to 2.10^5 cm^-2 s^-1, thus coping with conditions similar to those expected for future hadron collider experiments. 13 superlayers, each consisting of two individual chambers, have been assembled and installed in the experiment. The stereo layers inside each chamber are composed of honeycomb drift tube modules with 5 and 10 mm diameter cells. Chamber aging is prevented by coating the cathode foils with thin layers of copper and gold, together with a proper drift gas choice. Longitudinal wire segmentation is used to limit the occupancy in the most irradiated detector regions to about 20 %. The production of 978 modules was distributed among six different laboratories and took 15 months. For all materials in the fiducial region of the detector good compromises of stability versus thickness were found. A closed-loop gas system supplies the Ar/CF4/CO2 gas mixture to all chambers. The successful operation of the HERA-B Outer Tracker shows that a large tracker can be efficiently built and safely operated under huge radiation load at a hadron collider.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figure

The ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) proportional drift tube: design and performance

A straw proportional counter is the basic element of the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT). Its detailed properties as well as the main properties of a few TRT operating gas mixtures are described. Particular attention is paid to straw tube performance in high radiation conditions and to its operational stability

Micro-pattern gaseous detectors

Micro-strip gas chambers, with their excellent localization properties, high rate capability and good granularity, have been adopted by many experiments in particle physics. Two recurrent problems however have been reported: a slow degradation under sustained irradiation (or aging), and the rare but devastating occurrence of discharges. New breeds of detectors aim at improving on these crucial points, the micro-dot, CAT, micromegas, the gas electron multiplier are examples. Very performing, they are moreover robust and reliable. Two-stage devices, making use of a gas electron multiplier as first element, permit larger gains in presence of high rates and heavily ionizing tracks. Possible promising future developments in the field are outlined

The Outer Tracker Detector of the HERA-B Experiment. Part III: Operation and Performance.

In this paper we describe the operation and performance of the HERA-B Outer Tracker, a 112674 channel system of planar drift tube layers. The performance of the HERA-B Outer Tracker system fullfilled all requirements for stable and efficient operation in a hadronic environment, thus confirming the adequacy of the honeycomb drift tube technology and of the front-end readout system. The detector was stably operated with a gas gain of 30000 in an Ar/CF4/CO2 (65:30:5) gas mixture, yielding a good efficiency for triggering and track reconstruction, larger than 95 % for tracks with momenta above 5 GeV/c. The hit resolution of the drift cells was 300 to 320 micrometers and the relative momentum resolution can be described as: sigma(p)/p (in %) = (1.61 +- 0.02) + (0.0051 +- 0.0006) p. At the end of the HERA-B running no aging effects in the Outer Tracker cells were observed.Comment: 38 pages, 20 figures. v2: Added clarifications about trigger efficiency, momentum resolution and alignment precision. Corrected typos. Improved figure qualit