ATLAS strips: running experience

The SemiConductorTracker (SCT) is one of the three sub-detectors of the ATLAS Inner Detector. It is fully installed in the ATLAS cavern and has been commissioned with cosmic ray and beam events from the LHC. In the talk we will focus on operation experience, early alignment results and the tracking performance based on data taken in 2008

Towards smaller gap microbulks

Small gap Micromegas detectors (< 50µm) are expected to be optimal for high pres- sure applications. Combining the microbulk manufacturing technique with a small gap can result in attractive detectors for rare event detection, in particular double beta decay or dark matter searches. We present novel results obtained with small gap microbulks (25 and 12.5µm) that have been manufactured recently. For the first time for this type of detectors, we show experimentally that for each amplification gap there is an optimal pressure and that smaller gaps are more suitable for higher pressures