A position sensitive parallel plate avalanche counter for single particle and current readout

A parallel plate avalanche counter (PPAC) has been developed to serve as a radioactive beam monitor detector for the REX-ISOLDE project at CERN. The PPAC has a compact design with an active diameter of 4cm, a low effective thickness of ∼1mg/cm2, a spatial resolution in the x and y directions of 1.6mm, an applicability for all heavy ions with Z≥2, and a large dynamical range in counting rates of up to 109s−1 due to single particle or current readout, respectively.