In recent years Gas Electron Multipliers have proven to be reliable amplification stages at high beam rates, and can be used also in Time Projection Chambers. Our group developed a 1 dm$^3$ active volume double-GEM TPC, with spatial resolution of 50 $μm$ and 280 $μ$m. Custom designed FPGA data acquisition system enables rate capability for about 100 kHz$\cdot$mm$^{-2}$, providing excellent track-by-track position and angular information, better than 0.1 mm and 1 mrad respectively. The wide dynamic range of the system enables identification from $^{4}$He up to $^{86}$Kr using ionization measurement. Two of these TPCs are planned to operate in tandem mode to filter off-time particles and to achieve a superior angular resolution.
A large Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main device for tracking and charged-particle identification in the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. After the second long shutdown in 2019-2020, the LHC will deliver Pb beams colliding at an interaction rate up to 50 kHz, which is about a factor of 100 above the present read-out rate of the TPC. To fully exploit the LHC potential the TPC will be upgraded based on the Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) technology. A prototype of an ALICE TPC Outer Read-Out Chamber (OROC) was equipped with twelve large-size GEM foils as amplification stage to demonstrate…
A Time Projection Chamber (TPC) using micro-pattern gas detectors is planned as the main tracking device for a detector at the next Linear Collider. A novel support structure for Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs), which minimizes the material and improves the flatness of the foils, has been developed and tested with multiple GEM modules in a large TPC prototype at DESY. Reducing dead material at the GEM module boundaries improves the field homogeneity. In addition, it was shown in simulation that a field shaping ring at the border of the module can improve the charge collection in regions with n…
The ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is dedicated to heavy ion physics to explore the structure of strongly interacting matter. The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) of ALICE is a tracking detector located in the central region of the experiment. It offers excellent tracking capabilities as well as particle identification. After the second long shutdown (LS2) the LHC will run at substantially higher luminosities. To be able to increase the data acquisition rate by a factor of 100, the ALICE TPC experiment has to replace the Multi-Wire Pr…
We present measurements with a GEM based TPC prototypes and the TimePix CMOS ASIC as charge collecting anode. Tests with a small prototype were performed in a 5 GeV electron beam at DESY. Different GEM orientations and geometries were tested. It is shown that the point resolution for short drift distances is better than 20 micrometer. The achieved time resolution is better than 10 ns at 100 MHz clock frequency. Furthermore, experimental studies with an enlarged pixel size are addressed. To study the performance for longer drift distances a chamber with 26 cm drift length is operated in Bonn. U…
The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) can identify particle species using the energy loss (dE/dx) measured by the readout pad rows. The dE/dx resolution for the ILD (International Large Detector) -TPC for the International Linear Collider experiment is expected to have high resolution for clear identification. The dE/dx resolution of our prototype TPC with gating device (gating GEM) to suppress ions feedback was measured using the electron test beam in a magnet field at the facility in DESY. The dE/dx resolution for ILD-TPC was estimated using this test beam data. The signal charge was measured as…
The LCTPC collaboration is developing a time projection chamber (TPC) for a future linear collider. In the ILD concept for an ILC detector a TPC is foreseen as main tracking device. In order to get measurable signals on the anode, the primary electrons, produced by charged particles traversing the TPC, have to be multiplied. For this purpose gas electron multipliers (GEMs) can be used. Studies of these GEMs are performed at the DESY FLC group and presented in the following.
A fundamental limit to the application of Time Projection Chambers (TPCs) in high-rate experiments is the accumulation of slowly drifting ions in the active gas volume, which compromises the homogeneity of the drift field and hence the detector resolution. Conventionally, this problem is overcome by the use of ion-gating structures. This method, however, introduces large dead times and restricts trigger rates to a few hundred per second. The ion gate can be eliminated from the setup by the use of Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) foils for gas amplification, which intrinsically suppress the backfl…
The concept of a hybrid readout of a time projection chamber is presented. It combines a GEM-based amplification and a pad-based anode plane with a pixel chip as readout electronics. This way, a high granularity enabling to identify electron clusters from the primary ionisation is achieved as well as flexibility and large anode coverage. The benefits of this high granularity, in particular for dE/dx measurements, are outlined and the current software and hardware development status towards a proof-of-principle is given.
The spatial resolution along the pad-row direction was measured with a GEM-based TPC prototype for the future linear collider experiment in order to understand its performance for tracks with finite projected angles with respect to the pad-row normal. The degradation of the resolution due to the angular pad effect was confirmed to be consistent with the prediction of a simple calculation taking into account the cluster-size distribution and the avalanche fluctuation.
A large volume Time Projection Chamber (TPC) has been proposed as main tracking device at the International Linear Collider (ILC). Gas electron multipliers (GEMs) are studied as potential replacement of the conventional wire based gas amplification system of TPCs. This talk presents recent results from R&D activities with a small GEM-TPC prototype. The spatial resolution was measured for different magnetic fields up to 4 T.
A large volume time projection chamber (TPC) has been proposed as main tracking device for a detector at a future linear e+e- collider. Gas electron multipliers (GEMs) are studied as potential replacement of the conventional wire based gas amplification system of TPCs. This talk presents recent results from R&D activities with a small GEM-TPC prototype. The spatial resolution was measured for different magnetic fields up to 4 T.
Argon with an admixture of CF4 is expected to be a good candidate for the gas mixture to be used for a time projection chamber (TPC) in the future linear collider experiment because of its small transverse diffusion of drift electrons especially under a strong magnetic field. In order to confirm the superiority of this gas mixture over conventional TPC gases we carried out cosmic ray tests using a GEM-based TPC operated mostly in Ar-CF4-isobutane mixtures under 0 - 1 T axial magnetic fields. The measured gas properties such as gas gain and transverse diffusion constant as well as the observed …
Spatial resolution of less than 200 um is challenging for thermal neutron detection. A novel readout scheme based on the time-projection-chamber (TPC) concept is used in a gaseous electron multiplier (GEM) detector. Thermal neutrons are captured in a single 2 um thick Boron-10 converter cathode and secondary Helium and Lithium ions are produced with a combined energy of 2.8 MeV. These ions have sufficient energy to form straight tracks of several mm length. With a time resolving 2-dimensional readout of 400 um pitch in both directions, based on APV25 chips, the ions are tracked and their respe…
The challenging physics program at the International Linear Collider (ILC) poses stringent requirements on the performance of its tracking system. A large volume time projection chamber (TPC) is considered a good candidate for such a tracker. Whereas conventional TPCs used a wired based gas amplification system, a future TPC is likely to make use of micro pattern gas detectors as e. g. gas electron multipliers (GEMs) for gas amplification. This talk gives an overview over recent achievements from the R&D activities to build a TPC with a GEM based gas amplification system. This includes charge …
The ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is upgrading its central tracking detector, the Time Projection Chamber (TPC). The installation is foreseen during the second long shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider. The upgrade includes the complete exchange of the present MWPC readout chambers (ROC) with new ones based on Gas Electron Multiplier detectors. This is necessary due to the higher LHC luminosity and thus higher interaction rate. The new ROCs allow for continuous readout at 50 kHz compared to 500 Hz of the gated MWPC readout, while maintaining the particle identification…
A GEM TPC end panel pre-prototype was constructed for a large LC-TPC prototype to test its basic design philosophy and some of its engineering details. Its interim test results are presented.
We developed a prototype time projection chamber using gas electron multipliers (GEM-TPC) for high energy heavy ion collision experiments. To investigate its performance, we conducted a beam test with 3 kinds of gases (Ar(90%)-CH4(10%), Ar(70%)-C2H6(30%) and CF4). Detection efficiency of 99%, and spatial resolution of 79 $μ$m in the pad-row direction and 313 $μ$m in the drift direction were achieved. The test results show that the GEM-TPC meets the requirements for high energy heavy ion collision experiments. The configuration and performance of the GEM-TPC are described.
A large number of high-energy and heavy-ion experiments successfully used Time Projection Chamber (TPC) as central tracker and particle identification detector. However, the performance requirements on TPC for new high-rate particle experiments greatly exceed the abilities of traditional TPC read out by multi-wire proportional chamber (MWPC). Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detector has great potential to improve TPC performances when used as amplification device. In this paper we present the R&D activity on a new GEM-based TPC detector built as a prototype for the inner part for AMADEUS, a new …
A Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is an ideal device for the detection of charged particle tracks in a large volume covering a solid angle of almost $4π$. The high density of hits on a given particle track facilitates the task of pattern recognition in a high-occupancy environment and in addition provides particle identification by measuring the specific energy loss for each track. For these reasons, TPCs with Multiwire Proportional Chamber (MWPC) amplification have been and are widely used in experiments recording heavy-ion collisions. A significant drawback, however, is the large dead time of …
A large Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main device for tracking and charged-particle identification in the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. After the second long shutdown in 2019-2020, the LHC will deliver Pb beams colliding at an interaction rate of up to 50 kHz, which is about a factor of 50 above the present readout rate of the TPC. To fully exploit the LHC potential, the TPC readout chambers will be upgraded with Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) technology. To assure stable behaviour of the upgraded chambers in the harsh LHC environment, a dedicated R&D programme was launched in order …
A large volume Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is being considered for the central charged particle tracker for the detector for the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC). To meet the ILC-TPC spatial resolution challenge of ~100 microns with a manageable number of readout pads and channels of electronics, Micro Pattern Gas Detectors (MPGD) are being developed which could use pads comparable in width to the proportional-wire/cathode-pad TPC. We have built a prototype GEM readout TPC with 2 mm x 6 mm pads using the new concept of charge dispersion in MPGDs with a resistive anode. The depend…
For the International Large Detector (ILD) at the planned International Linear Collider (ILC) a Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is foreseen as the main tracking detector. To achieve the required point resolution, Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detectors (MPGD) will be used in the amplification stage. A readout module using a stack of three Gas Electron Multipliers (GEM) for gas amplification was developed at DESY and tested at the DESY II Test Beam Facility. After introducing the readout module and the infrastructure at the test beam facility, the performance related to single point and double-hit resolu…
The GEM-TPC detector will be part of the standard Super-FRS detection system, as tracker detectors at several focal stations along the separator and its three branches.
The ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) Time Projection Chamber (TPC) at CERN LHC is presently equipped with Multi Wire Proportional Chambers (MWPCs). A gating grid prevents ions produced during the gas amplification from moving into the drift volume. The maximum drift time of the electrons together with the closure time of the gating grid allows a maximum readout rate of about 3 kHz. After the Long Shutdown 2 (from 2021 onwards), the LHC will provide lead-lead collisions at an expected interaction rate of 50 kHz. To take data at this rate the TPC will be upgraded with new readout chambers…
A novel charged particle tracking device, a high precision time projection chamber with gas electron multiplier and pad readout, is a leading candidate as the central tracker for an experiment at the International Linear Collider. To characterize the performance of such a system, a small TPC has been operated within a magnetic field, measuring cosmic-ray and laser tracks. Good tracking resolution and two particle separation, sufficient for a large scale ILC central tracker, are achieved.
A high momentum resolution is required for the precision measurement of Higgs boson at the International Linear Collider (ILC) using the recoil mass technique. The International Large Detector (ILD) is designed to meet this requirement by an MPGD-readout Time Projection Chamber (TPC) providing about 200 sample points each with a spatial resolution of 100 $μ$m operated in a magnetic field of 3.5 T. However, there is a potential problem that many positive ions generated in the gas amplification process in the end-plane detector modules would flow back into the drift volume of the TPC and distort…
One of the potential problems of a Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detector (MPGD)-based Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the Ion back Flow (IBF): ions generated through the avalanche amplification process flow back to the drift volume of the TPC and disarrange an electric field inside it. Consequently non-negligible degradation of azimuthal spatial resolution is caused due to this IBF. Meanwhile, it is necessary to collect primary ionized electrons to maintain intrinsic performance of the MPGDs. The MPGD based TPC is currently planned to be used as a central tracking detector of the International Large…
For the International Large Detector (ILD), foreseen to be built at the International Linear Collider (ILC), a Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is intended to be used as the main tracking detector. The amplification will be provided by Micro Pattern Gaseous Detectors (MPGDs). One option is the use of Gas Electron Multipliers (GEM) in combination with a segmented pad readout plane. The TPC group at DESY developed a modular system implementing a triple GEM stack mounted on thin ceramic grids. This material choice allows for high mechanical rigidity of the support structure at a reduced amount of ma…
The third generation of the Beijing Electron Spectrometer, BESIII, is an apparatus for high energy physics research. The hunting of new particles and the measurement of their properties or the research of rare processes are sought to understand if the measurements confirm the Standard Model and to look for physics beyond it. The detectors ensure the reconstruction of events belonging to the sub-atomic domain. The operation and the efficiency of the BESIII inner tracker is compromised due to the the radiation level of the apparatus. A new detector is needed to guarantee better performance and t…
A new fast neutron spectrometer named n-TPC has been designed by LPRI (Key Laboratory of Particle & Radiation Imaging, Ministry of Education) at Tsinghua University. The neutron energy spectrum can be calculated from the recoil angle and energy of the recoil proton detected by a 704-pad GEM-TPC. In beam tests at IHIP (Institute of Heavy Ion Physics, Peking University) in 2014, n-TPC performed better than 6 percents at 6MeV energy resolution and 0.5 percents detection efficiency. To find the best working parameters (the component and proportion of the gas, the high voltage between each GEM laye…
A combination Time Projection Chamber-Cherenkov prototype detector has been developed as part of the Detector R&D Program for a future Electron Ion Collider. The prototype was tested at the Fermilab test beam facility to provide a proof of principle to demonstrate that the detector is able to measure particle tracks and provide particle identification information within a common detector volume. The TPC portion consists of a 10x10x10cm3 field cage, which delivers charge from tracks to a 10x10cm2 quadruple GEM readout. Tracks are reconstructed by interpolating the hit position of clusters on an…
The use of GEM foils for the amplification stage of a TPC instead of a con- ventional MWPC allows one to bypass the necessity of gating, as the backdrift is suppressed thanks to the asymmetric field configuration. This way, a novel continuously running TPC, which represents one option for the PANDA central tracker, can be realized. A medium sized prototype with a diameter of 300 mm and a length of 600 mm will be tested inside the FOPI spectrometer at GSI using a carbon or lithium beam at intermediate energies (E = 1-3AGeV). This detector test under realistic experimental conditions should allo…
A new Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is currently under development for the sPHENIX experiment at RHIC. The TPC will be read out using multistage GEM detectors on each end and will be divided into approximately 40 pad layers in radius. Each pad layer is required to provide a spatial resolution of ~250 microns, which must be achieved with a minimal channel count in order to minimize the overall cost of the detector. The current proposal is to make the pads into a zigzag shape in order to enhance charge sharing among neighboring pads. This will allow for the possibility to interpolate the hit pos…
The performance and long term stability of an optically readout Time Projection Chamber with an electron amplification structure based on three Gas Electron Multipliers was studied. He/CF$_4$ based gas mixtures were used in two different proportions (60/40 and 70/30) in a CYGNO prototype with 7 litres sensitive volume. With electrical configurations providing very similar electron gains, an almost full detection efficiency in the whole detector volume was found with both mixtures, while a light yield about 20\% larger for the 60/40 was found. The electrostatic stability was tested by monitorin…
This document contains the pre-design of the beam diagnostics components Tracking Detectors for the Super-FRS. A GEM-TPC detector has been suggested as suitable tracking detector for the ion/fragment beams produced at the in-flight separator Super-FRS under construction at the FAIR facility. The detector concept combines two widely used approaches in gas filled detectors, the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) and the Gas Electron Multiplication (GEM). Three detector generations (prototypes) have been tested in 2011, 2012 and 2014 with relativistic ion beams at GSI. Due to the high-resolution achro…
A large volume TPC is a leading candidate for the central tracking detector at a future high energy linear collider. To improve the resolution a new readout based on micro-pattern gas detectors is being developed. Measurements of the spatial resolution of cosmic-ray tracks in a GEM TPC are presented. We find that the resolution suffers if the readout pads are too wide with respect to the charge distribution at the readout plane due to insufficient charge sharing. For narrow pads of 2 x 6 mm**2 we measure a resolution of 100 micometer at short drift distances in the absence of an axial magnetic…
The ALICE Collaboration is planning a major upgrade of its central barrel detectors to be able to cope with the increased LHC luminosity beyond 2020. For the TPC, this implies a replacement of the currently used gated MWPCs (Multi-Wire Proportional Chamber) by GEM (Gas Electron Multiplier) based readout chambers. In order to prove, that the present particle identification capabilities via measurement of the specific energy loss are retained after the upgrade, a prototype of the ALICE IROC (Inner Readout Chamber) has been evaluated in a test beam campaign at the CERN PS. The d$E$/d$x$ resolutio…
Optical readout of large Time Projection Chambers (TPCs) with multiple Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs) amplification stages has shown to provide very interesting performances for high energy particle tracking. Proposed applications for low-energy and rare event studies, such as Dark Matter search, ask for demanding performance in the keV energy range. The performance of such a readout was studied in details as a function of the electric field configuration and GEM gain by using a $^{55}$Fe source within a 7 litre sensitive volume detector developed as a part of the R\&D for the CYGNUS project.…
The ALICE Collaboration is planning a major upgrade of its central barrel detectors to be able to cope with the increased LHC luminosity beyond 2020. In order to record at an increased interaction rate of up to 50$\,$kHz in Pb$-$Pb collisions, the TPC will be operated in an ungated mode with continuous readout. This demands for a replacement of the currently employed gated Multi-Wire Proportional Chambers by GEM-based (Gas Electron Multiplier) readout chambers, while retaining the performance in particular in terms of particle identification capabilities via the measurement of the specific ene…
Time Projection Chamber (TPC) has been chosen as the main tracking system in several high-flux and high repetition rate experiments. These include on-going experiments such as ALICE and future experiments such as PANDA at FAIR and ILC. Different $\mathrm{R}\&\mathrm{D}$ activities were carried out on the adoption of Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) as the gas amplification stage of the ALICE-TPC upgrade version. The requirement of low ion feedback has been established through these activities. Low ion feedback minimizes distortions due to space charge and maintains the necessary values of detecto…
A Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is a powerful detector for 3-dimensional tracking and particle identification for ultra-high multiplicity events. It is the central tracking device of many experiments, e.g. the ALICE experiment at CERN. The necessity of a switching electrostatic gate, which prevents ions produced in the amplification region o MWPCs from entering the drift volume, however, restricts its application to trigger rates of the order of 1 kHz. Charge amplification by Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) foils instead of proportional wires offers an intrinsic suppression of the ion backflow, …
A prototype detector is being developed which combines the functions of a Time Projection Chamber for charged particle tracking and a Cherenkov detector for particle identification. The TPC consists of a 10x10x10 cm3 drift volume where the charge is drifted to a 10x10 cm2 triple GEM detector. The charge is measured on a readout plane consisting of 2x10 mm2 chevron pads which provide a spatial resolution ~ 100 microns per point in the chevron direction along with dE/dx information. The Cherenkov portion of the detector consists of a second 10x10 cm2 triple GEM with a photosensitive CsI photocat…
For the International Large Detector concept at the planned International Linear Collider, the use of time projection chambers (TPC) with micro-pattern gas detector readout as the main tracking detector is investigated. In this paper, results from a prototype TPC, placed in a 1 T solenoidal field and read out with three independent GEM-based readout modules, are reported. The TPC was exposed to a 6 GeV electron beam at the DESY II synchrotron. The efficiency for reconstructing hits, the measurement of the drift velocity, the space point resolution and the control of field inhomogeneities are p…
The FAIR[1] facility is an international accelerator centre for research with ion and antiproton beams. It is being built at Darmstadt, Germany as an extension to the current GSI research institute. One major part of the facility will be the Super-FRS[2] separator, which will be include in phase one of the project construction. The NUSTAR experiments will benefit from the Super-FRS, which will deliver an unprecedented range of radioactive ion beams (RIB). These experiments will use beams of different energies and characteristics in three different branches; the high-energy which utilizes the R…
The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) for the International Linear Collider will need to measure about 200 track points with a resolution close to 100 $μ$m. A Micro Pattern Gas Detector (MPGD) readout TPC could achieve the desired resolution with existing techniques using sub-millimeter width pads at the expense of a large increase in the detector cost and complexity. We have recently applied a new MPGD readout concept of charge dispersion to a prototype GEM-TPC and demonstrated the feasibility of achieving good resolution with pads similar in width to the ones used for the proportional wire TPC. …
The FAIR facility is an international accelerator centre for research with ion and antiproton beams. It is being built at Darmstadt, Germany as an extension to the current GSI research institute. One major part of the facility will be the Super-FRS separator, which will be include in phase one of the project construction. The NUSTAR experiments will benefit from the Super-FRS, which will deliver an unprecedented range of radioactive ion beams (RIB). These experiments will use beams of different energies and characteristics in three different branches; the high-energy which utilizes the RIB at …
A new type of Time Projection Chamber (TPC) has been proposed for the upgrade of the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment at CERN) so as to cater to the high luminosity environment expected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility in future. This device will rely on the intrinsic ion back flow (IBF) suppression of Micro-Pattern Gas Detectors (MPGD) based technology in particular the Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM). GEM is to minimise the space charge effect in the main drift volume and thus will not require the standard gating grid and the resulting intrinsic dead time. It will thus be poss…
After the Long Shutdown 2 the LHC will provide lead-lead collisions at interaction rates as high as 50kz. In order to cope with such conditions the ALICE Time Projection Chamber (TPC) needs to be upgraded. After the upgrade the TPC will run in a continuous mode, without any degradation of the momentum and dE/dx resolution compared to the performance of the present TPC. Since readout by multi-wire proportional chambers is no longer feasible with these requirements, new technologies have to be employed. In the new readout chambers the electron amplification is provided by a stack of four Gas Ele…
Gated wires are widely used in Time Projection Chamber (TPC) to avoid ion back-flow (IBF) in the drift volume. The anode wires can provide stable gain at high voltage with a long lifetime. However, switching on and off the gated grid (GG) leads to a dead time and also limit the readout efficiency of the TPC. Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) foil provides a possibility of continuous readout for TPC, which can suppress IBF efficiently while keeping stable gain. A prototype chamber including two layers of GEM foils and anode wires has been built to combine both advantages from GEM and anode wire. Us…
The International Large Detector (ILD) --a detector concept for the International Linear Collider (ILC)-- foresees a Time Projection Chamber (TPC) as its main tracking detector. Currently, the R&D efforts for such a TPC focus on studies using a large prototype that can accommodate up to seven read-out modules which are comparable to the ones that would be used in the final ILD TPC. The DESY TPC group has developed such a module using GEMs for the gas amplification, which are mounted on thin ceramic frames. The module design and first results of a test beam campaign are presented.
Negative-ion time projection chambers(TPCs) have been studied for low-rate and high-resolution applications such as dark matter search experiments. Recently, a full volume fiducialization in a self-triggering TPC was realized. This innovative technology demonstrated a significant reduction in the background with MWPC-TPCs. We studied negative-ion TPC using the μ-PIC+GEM system and obtained sufficient gas gain with CS$_{2}$gas and SF$_{6}$ gas at low pressures. We expect an improvement in detector sensitivity and angular resolution with better electronics.
Gas-based time projection chambers (TPCs) have been shown to be highly sensitive X-ray polarimeters having excellent quantum efficiency while at the same time achieving large modulation factors. To observe polarization of the prompt X-ray emission of a Gamma-ray burst (GRB), a large area detector is needed. Diffusion of the electron cloud in a standard TPC could be prohibitive to measuring good modulation when the drift distance is large. Therefore, we propose using a negative ion TPC (NITPC) with Nitromethane (CH3NO2) as the electron capture agent. The diffusion of negative ions is reduced ov…
