Construction and Test of the Precision Drift Chambers for the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer

TL;DR

This paper details the design, construction, and testing of large-scale Monitored Drift Tube chambers for the ATLAS muon spectrometer, achieving high precision in wire positioning and track resolution.

Contribution

It presents the successful construction and testing of large MDT chambers with precise wire positioning for the ATLAS muon spectrometer.

Findings

Chamber achieved 14 micron wire positioning accuracy.

Full-scale prototype demonstrated 80 micron single-tube resolution.

First chamber successfully completed and tested.

Abstract

The Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) chambers for the muon spectrometer of the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) consist of 3-4 layers of pressurised drift tubes on either side of a space frame carrying an optical deformation monitoring system. The chambers have to provide a track position resolution of 40 microns with a single-tube resolution of at least 80 microns and a sense wire positioning accu- racy of 20 ?microns (rms). The feasibility was demonstrated with the full-scale prototype of one of the largest MDT chambers with 432 drift tubes of 3.8 m length. For the ATLAS muon spectrometer, 88 chambers of this type have to be built. The first chamber has been completed with a wire positioning accuracy of 14 microns (rms).