Negative Ion Drift TPC Development for High-Resolution Tracking (Final Technical Report)

Abstract

Together with our Japanese (Kobe) and US collaborators (Hawaii and Wellesley), we proposed work on negative-ion time projection chambers (NITPC) with the recently discovered NI gas, SF 6 . The 1-year proposal requested $\$$37,699 at UNM to extend our work on studying the properties of SF 6 and to perform R&D on a novel TPC readout scheme that employs timing alone to reconstruct short tracks in 2-dimensions. The proposal was approved but the budget reduced to $\$$8K, thereby reducing the scope of the project. We chose to focus our efforts on R&D of the novel TPC readout (the “tilted GEM” readout) and used our funds for materials and supplies and machine shop time at UNM. Support for manpower, such as an engineer, graduate student and the PI were not included. Here we provide a fuller motivation for this R&D (which was not possible in the very short proposal) and describe the accomplishments over the ~1.5 year of the grant (including a NCE).