A Novel Electrical Method to Measure Wire Tensions for Time Projection Chambers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new electrical method for rapidly and precisely measuring wire tensions in multi-wire drift chambers, suitable for large-scale and cryogenic applications like the DUNE detector.

Contribution

It proposes a scalable electrical resonance technique for wire tension measurement that works efficiently at cryogenic temperatures and can handle many wires simultaneously.

Findings

Demonstrated the method's effectiveness in real-world scenarios.

Showed the system's sensitivity limits based on voltage and wire length.

Validated applicability at cryogenic temperatures.

Abstract

We present a novel electrical technique to measure the tension of wires in multi-wire drift chambers. We create alternating electric fields by biasing adjacent wires on both sides of a test wire with a superposition of positive and negative DC voltages on an AC signal ($V_{\rm AC} \pm V_{\rm DC}$). The resulting oscillations of the wire will display a resonance at its natural frequency, and the corresponding change of the capacitance will lead to a measurable current. This scheme is scalable to multiple wires and therefore enables us to precisely measure the tension of a large number of wires in a short time. This technique can also be applied at cryogenic temperatures making it an attractive solution for future large time-projection chambers such as the DUNE detector. We present the concept, an example implementation and its performance in a real-world scenario and discuss the limitations of the sensitivity of the system in terms of voltage and wire length.