Measurement of the trailing edge of cosmic-ray track signals from a round-tube drift chamber

TL;DR

This study investigates the potential of using the trailing edge of signals from a drift chamber to determine particle passage times, which could improve event separation in high-rate experiments like the LHC.

Contribution

It demonstrates the feasibility of measuring trailing edge times with 12 ns resolution using simple pulse shaping in a small tube chamber.

Findings

Achieved 12 ns rms time resolution for trailing edge detection.

Simple pulse shaping effectively reduces signal tail and improves timing accuracy.

Monte Carlo simulations highlight the importance of optimized signal shaping.

Abstract

The trailing edge of tube drift-chamber signals for charged particles is expected to provide information concerning the particle passage time. This information may be useful for separating meaningful signals from overlapping garbage at high-rate experiments, such as the future LHC experiments. We carried out a cosmic-ray test using a small tube chamber in order to investigate the feasibility of this idea. We achieved a trailing-edge time resolution of 12 ns in rms by applying simple pulse shaping to eliminate a signal tail. A comparison with a Monte Carlo simulation indicates the importance of well-optimized signal shaping to achieve good resolution. The resolution may be further improved with better shaping.