Performance of the TPC with micro pixel chamber readout: micro-TPC

Micro-TPC, a time projection chamber (TPC) with micro pixel chamber (/spl mu/-PIC) readout, was developed for the detection of the three-dimensional (3-D) fine (/spl sim/ submillimeter) tracks of charged particles. We developed a two-dimensional position sensitive gaseous detector or the /spl mu/-PIC, with the detection area of 10/spl times/10 cm/sup 2/ and 65536 anode electrodes of 400 /spl mu/m pitch. We achieved the gas gain of more than 10/sup 4/ without any other multipliers. With the pipeline readout system specially developed for the /spl mu/-PIC, we detected X-rays at the maximum rate of 7.7 MHz. We developed a micro-TPC with the /spl mu/-PIC and 3-D tracks of electrons were detected with the micro-TPC. We also developed a prototype of the MeV gamma-ray imaging detector which is a hybrid of the micro-TPC and NaI(Tl) scintillator so that we showed that this is a promising method for the MeV gamma-ray imaging.