A new gaseous detector for tracking: The blade chamber

As part of the LAA project at CERN a prototype of a streamer-chamber in which a blade, instead of a wire, is used as the amplification electrode has been built. A big advantage is that the blade can be bent to follow a curve so that a chamber can be built with cells ideally matched to the geometry of the experiment. Moreover, a blade is very rugged, it can withstand severe mechanical shocks and it is also resistant to damage by sparks. The drift time has been measured and a spatial resolution of 250 μm has been achieved. Left-right ambiguity can be solved by measuring the charge asymmetry on the walls. The coordinate along the blade is read by external pickup strips.