Testing of summing electronics and VDC A/D Cards was performed to assure proper functioning and operation within defined parameters. In both the summing modules and the VDC A/D cards, testing for minimum threshold voltage for each channel and crosstalk between neighboring channels was performed. Additionally, the modules were installed in Hall A with input signals from shower detectors arranged to establish a trigger by summing signals together with the use of tested modules. Testing involved utilizing a pulser to mimic PMT signals, a discriminator, an attenuator, a scaler, a level translator, an oscilloscope, a high voltage power supply, and a special apparatus used to power and send signal to the A/D cards. After testing, modules were obtained that meet necessary criteria for use in the APEX experiment, and the A/D cards obtained were determined to have adequate specifications for their utilization, with specific results included in the appendix.

SuperB is a high luminosity e+e- collider experiment that is currently being designed to explore the flavour sector of particle physics. The detector at SuperB will contain a drift chamber, a gas filled device used to measure the momentum and identity of particles produced in the collisions. Particle identification in a drift chamber uses the measured amount of ionization deposited by the particle in the cells of the chamber, which provides a measurement of the particle speed. The ionization loss is traditionally measured by integrating the total charge released by the ionization after a gas amplification avalanche process. Since such a measurement has potentially large uncertainties associated with fluctuations in the gas amplification and other processes, it is possible that measuring the number of primary clusters of ionization caused by the particle could provide an improvement in the measurement of the ionization loss. The results of experiments performed at the University of Victoria and the TRIUMF laboratory M11 test beam using a SuperB drift chamber prototype to test the feasibility of counting clusters are presented here. The ability to separate muons and pions at the momenta explored in the TRIUMF testbeam was similar to the ability to separate pions and kaons at the higher momenta of SuperB. It was found that counting the clusters provides a significant improvement to particle identification when combined with the traditional measurement of the integrated charge. / Graduate

Aim of this report is the investigation of suitable operational conditions for the drif{}t chambers MDC III installed in the HADES setup. The simulations performed showed that operating the drif{}t chambers in a mode with nearly constant electron drif{}t velocity in a predominant part of the cell allows a more precise and fast tracking. This is particularly important for electrons and positrons; here the invariant dilepton mass must be reconstructed with high precision to get a resolution of $\Delta M/M\approx 1\%$ for the $\omega$ and $\phi$ mass peaks and thus a chance to verify also small in-medium mass shif{}ts. This helps to realize the physics program at HADES which focuses on the search for such mass shif{}ts to get insight into the in-medium behaviour of hadrons in dense strongly interacting matter.

Aim of this report is the investigation of suitable operational conditions for the drif{}t chambers MDC III installed in the HADES setup. The simulations performed showed that operating the drif{}t chambers in a mode with nearly constant electron drif{}t velocity in a predominant part of the cell allows a more precise and fast tracking. This is particularly important for electrons and positrons; here the invariant dilepton mass must be reconstructed with high precision to get a resolution of $\Delta M/M\approx 1\%$ for the $\omega$ and $\phi$ mass peaks and thus a chance to verify also small in-medium mass shif{}ts. This helps to realize the physics program at HADES which focuses on the search for such mass shif{}ts to get insight into the in-medium behaviour of hadrons in dense strongly interacting matter.

ÿþD / The intense radiation environment in the HERA-B experiment, being comparable to that of LHC experiments, requires that the detector be very resistant to high radiation loads. The Outer Tracker of HERA-B consists of drift tubes folded from polycarbonate foils (honeycomb) and is operated with a CF4-containing gas mixture. Aging tests made in HERA-B, under hadronic irradiation, using prototype drift chambers showed a rapid rise of self-sustaining dark currents (Malter effect). Extensive aging studies were carried out with the objective to find an appropriate set of construction materials as well as optimal operational parameters. It was shown that the gain loss (anode aging) and the Malter effect could be avoided after replacing the methane in the counting gas, Ar/CF4/CH4, by CO2 and applying cathode coating. However, other, relatively less known aging effects appeared: rising conductivity of the wire-supporting strips and wire corrosion. These two aging effects could also be prevented keeping water at a proper concentration. The aging tests showed that a too high water content (above about 500 ppm) gives rise to strip conductivity, conversely, a too low water content (below about 100 ppm) enhances anode wire corrosion. In an attempt to interpret the test results, plasma phenomena like quenching by different admixtures, production of molecular species, concentration of long-lived HF produced via CF4 dissociation in the avalanche were semi-quantitatively estimated. This work contains also a comprehensive summary of all aging studies for the Outer Tracker and an overview of the literature on wire chamber aging, in particular with CF4-based counting gas mixtures.

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