Drift chambers Wire chamber

cut-away showing interior of drift chamber



drift chamber @ musée des arts et métiers in paris

if 1 precisely measures timing of current pulses of wires , takes account ions need time drift nearest wire, 1 can infer distance @ particle passed wire. increases accuracy of path reconstruction , known drift chamber.

the drift chamber functions balancing loss of energy particles caused impacts particles of gas, accretion of energy created high-energy electrical fields in use cause particle acceleration. design similar mw chamber instead central layer wires @ greater distance apart. detection of charged particles within chamber possible ionizing of particles of gas due motion of charged particle.

the fermilab detector cdf ii contains drift chamber called central outer tracker. chamber contains argon , ethane gas, , wires separated 3.56 millimetres gaps.

if 2 drift chambers used wires of 1 orthogonal wires of other, both orthogonal beam direction, more precise detection of position obtained. if additional simple detector (like 1 used in veto counter) used detect, poor or null positional resolution, particle @ fixed distance before or after wires, tri-dimensional reconstruction can made , speed of particle deducted difference in time of passage of particle in different part of detector. setup gives detector called time projection chamber (often written tpc)

for measuring velocity of electrons in gas (drift velocity) there special drift chambers, velocity drift chambers measure drift time known location of ionisation.