Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) Chamber Characteristics Test

Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs) have been used in many HEP experiments as tracking detectors. They are sensitive to X-rays which allows use beyond that of HEP. The UTA High Energy group has been working on using GEMs as the sensitive gap detector in a DHCAL for the ILC. The physics goals at the ILC put a stringent requirement on detector performance. Especially the precision required for jet mass and positions demands an unprecedented jet energy resolution to hadronic calorimeters. A solution to meet this requirement is using the Particle Flow Algorithm (PFA). In order for PFA to work well, high calorimeter granularity is necessary. Previous studies based on GEANT simulations using GEM DHCAL gave confidence on the performance of GEM in the sensitive gap in a sampling calorimeter and its use as a DHCAL in PFA. The UTA HEP team has built several GEM prototype chambers, including the current 30cm x 30cm chamber integrated with the SLAC-developed 64 channel kPiX analog readout chip. This chamber has been tested on the bench using radioactive sources and cosmic ray muons. In order to have fuller understanding of various chamber characteristics, the experiments plan to expose 1-3 GEM chambers of dimension 35cm x 35cm x 5cm with 1cm x 1cm pad granularity with 64 channel 2-D simultaneous readout using the kPiX chip. In this experiment the experiments pan to measure MiP signal height, chamber absolute efficiencies, chamber gain versus high voltage across the GEM gap, the uniformity of the chamber across the 8cm x 8cm area, cross talk and its distance dependence to the triggered pad, chamber rate capabilities, and the maximum pad occupancy rate.