A many particle-tracking detector with drift planes and segmentel cathode readout

The authors describe the design and performance of a detector system for tracking charged particles in an environment of high track density and rates up to 1 MHz. The system operates in the forward spectrometer of the BNL heavy ion experiment E814 and uses principles of general interest in high rate, high multiplicity applications such as at RHIC or SSC. The authors require their system to perform over a large dynamic range, detecting singly charged particles as well as fully ionized relativistic 28Si. Results on gas gain saturation, δ-ray suppression, and overall detector performance in the presence of a 14.6 GeV/nucleon 28Si beam and a 14 GeV proton beam are presented