Construction of the World's Largest Cathode Strip Chambers for Muon Tracking in PHENIX at RHIC
Abstract
The PHENIX detector, at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory will study Au+Au collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV per nucleon. The aim of the experiment is to demonstrate the existence of quark-gluon plasma, to investigate it's properties, and to study the spin structure of protons. To answer these questions PHENIX will detect, identify, and measure the momentum of most of the subatomic particles that are generated through these collisions. The purpose of the PHENIX Muon Arms is to allow for the study of vector mesons decaying into dimuon pairs, the Drell- Yan process, and to provide muon detection in heavy flavor decays. The Muon Tracking subsystem consists of three stations of cathode strip chambers as part of two magnetic spectrometers which make up each Muon Arm. Each of these three detector stations will cover 360 degrees auzimuthal, and 12 to 35 degrees with respect to the beam axis in the south arm. The anode wires are 20 microns in diameterand have a spacing of 1 cm. The readout spacing is the same for the cathode strips. The chambers will have an intrinsic resolution of 90 microns.
- Publication:
-
APS Division of Nuclear Physics Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- October 2000
- Bibcode:
- 2000APS..DNP.AS041K