Speaker
Antonio Policicchio
(Universita degli Studi della Calabria)
Description
Many of the physics processes of interest at Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will
involve muon production in the final state. The Monitored Drift Tube (MDT)
chambers, the precision tracking elements of the ATLAS muon
spectrometer, are the main tools for the muon identification and
measurement. They will operate in the harsh background environment
imposed by the LHC conditions, mainly due to photons and neutrons.
Despite the detection efficiencies for neutrons and photons are very low, the
low-energy particle background will dominate the counting rate in most
areas of the spectrometer, where an overall maximum counting rate of 500
Hz/cm 2 is expected. The upgrade to Super-LHC will involve fluxes ten times
higher. To study the behaviour of MDT chambers under massive neutron
irradiation at the level of Super-LHC, an extensive test was performed at the
“Tapiro” Neutron Facility of the ENEA “La Casaccia” Research Center,
irradiating a test detector during 2005. The MDT chamber performances
have been monitored by the analysis of the accumulated charge spectra and
the study of drift properties. Moreover, the measurement of the effects on
the gas gain and the tracking efficiency, due to neutron and photon high
rate, has been performed. Results are here presented.
Author
Antonio Policicchio
(Universita degli Studi della Calabria)
