Particle tracking with scintillating fibers

This paper presents our research and development work on particle tracking with scintillating fibers. We have developed new fiber dyes, more efficient fiber cladding, coherent fiber bundles with improved packing fraction, and a new fiber readout technique (ISPA-tube). Altogether, these new developments increased the hit density of fine grain (60 /spl mu/m) fibers by about seven times. This results in mini-tracks per 2.5-mm fiber layer rather than in single hits only and enhances the track reconstruction efficiency to nearly 100%. Compared with competing tracking methods (silicon strips, micro strip gas chambers), our scintillating fibers are superior in hit numbers per radiation length and in the two-track resolution. They require much less readout channels and consequently no cooling provisions to remove their electronic heat.