Construction and initial operation of a proportional wire detector for use in a Cerenkov ring imaging system

The final version of the multiwire single-electron detector for the Cerenkov ring imaging device of the Stanford Linear Collider Detector is described. Recent research-and-development efforts to define the design parameters are reported. These were concerned with computer simulations necessary for the detector design; wire aging and its solution; surface resistivity and voltage breakdown of G-10 in a TMAE environment; corona studies for various gases; wire breaking in the spark; measured mechanical characteristics of 7- mu m carbon wires; wire-stretching technique for 7- mu m carbon wires; and wire tension measuring for th final detector. The details of the geometry of the detector and experimental tests with the detector itself are discussed.<
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