A large proportional drift chamber with two-dimensional read-out

Abstract The construction and performance of a large drift chamber are described, which has a sensitive area of 5 m2 and an average chamber thickness of 0.55 × 10−3 radiation lengths. Simultaneous sense wire- and high voltage read-out gives a good time correlation with ajitter of 2.0 ns fwhm. Measurements with a collimated radioactive α-sources resulted in a time resolution of 4.3 ns fwhm corresponding to a space resolution of 0.20 mm fwhm at the sense wire. The space resolution at the high voltage plane is about 25 mm fwhm.