The design, construction, installation, and performance of the small angle rear tracking detector of the ZEUS experiment are described. The results on electron position measurement, electron energy correction, and background reduction at the first-level trigger are presented. The impact on the measurement of the proton structure function is discussed.

A muon position detector based on limited streamer tubes has been built for the ZEUS experiment at the HERA e-p collider at Desy. The tubes are arranged in chambers equipped with electronics circuitry providing an analog read-out of induced signals on strips set orthogonal to the tube wires. The electronic module for charge amplification and conversion will be described including some results obtained from the complete system.

The performance of a small prototype chamber of the baseline project for the muon barrel detector for CMS has been studied in a muon beam. Its efficiency with different gases and wire diameters, the trigger possibilities and the response in presence of a large number of electromagnetic secondaries associated to the muon are evaluated. The results are compared with a full Monte Carlo simulation.

A novel method was developed to obtain precise timing of muon hits in drift tubes at the first trigger level, and hence to associate a detected muon with the bunch crossing in which it originated. A very good time resolution of approximately 2 ns was obtained. Some other topics related to muon detection were investigated.

The FENICE detector, installed at the Frascati e+ e− storage ring ADONE, for measuring the neutron e.m. form factors in the timelike region, is described. FENICE is a nonmagnetic detector and consists of a complex array of scintillators, limited streamer tubes and iron converters for detecting mainly the process e+ e− → nn. Antineutrons are identified by the charged prongs produced in their annihilation and the antineutron velocity is measured by the retrieved annihilation time with respect to the beam crossing time. Neutrons are detected in plastic scintillator layers. To reduce the cosmic rays background a concrete shield, covered by an active veto system, is added.

The detector presented is designed to measure the proton e.m. form factors by measuring e+e− pairs produced in pp annihilations at low energy or at rest.

A read-out for MWPC and drift chamber is presented in which the coordinate along the sense wires is obtained by measuring the centre of gravity (CoG) of the charge induced on cathode strips or pads. The peak value of the signals coming from subsets of 8-pad cathodes are recorded by a parallel sample and hold, strobed by their own OR, and then serially digitized by one 6-bit fast ADC (FADC).