Multiwire Proportional Chambers

G. Charpak (ficole Superieure de Physique et Chemie, Paris, and CERN Geneva) invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber. 

The basic principle of operation of gas filled detectors, be it multiwire proportional chambers or linear devices, with a single anode wire, is the mechanism of gas amplification. This kind of detectors have — as its name implies, a filling of an... 

Photon counting devices are required in order to arrive at the necessary accuracy. The noise of the detector has to be lower than 4 orders of magnitude with respect to the signal. Our experience with multiwire proportional chambers may let us believe that this rather stringent condition can be fulfilled. The simultaneous measurement of the whole scattering pattern by position sensitive area detectors is absolutely mandatory... 

CHA 70] CHARPAK G., RAHN D., STEINER H., Some developments in the operation of multiwire proportional chambers , VucZ. Instrum. Meth., vol. 80, p. 13-34, 1970. 

The first magnetic spectrometers used photographic plates for the detection of the deflected particles. Today, position-sensitive semiconductor detectors or multiwire proportional chambers are used (see Sec. 13.10). These detectors are better than photographic plates because they have the capability of on-line data collection, provide time information for coincidence experiments, and measure the energy of the particle. 

The telescope ART-P aboard Granat was designed for imaging and spectroscopy in the 2.5-60 keV energy band (Sunyaev et al., 1990). It consists of a position sensitive detector (a multiwire proportional chamber with a window area of 625 cm ) equipped with a URA coded mask and a collimator. 

Radioactive zones can be detected on thin layers by film autoradiography, digital autoradiography with a multiwire proportional chamber, use of charged-coupled devices, or bioimaging/phosphor imaging techniques. These methods differ in terms of factors such as simplicity, speed, sensitivity, resolution, linear range, and accuracy and precision of quantification, and the method of choice depends on the available instrumentation, the type of experiment, and the information needed. 

The CSCs are trapezoidal shaped multiwire proportional chambers which consist of 6 anode wire planes crossed with 7 copper strips cathode panels in a gas volume. They provide a two-dimensional position measurement, where the r and (p coordinates are determined by the copper strips and the anode wires, respectively. The muon detector endcaps consist of 4 CSC stations on each side and identify muons in the pseudorapidity range of 0.9 < V < 2.4. 

The multiwire proportional chamber (MWPC) is a device used extensively in high-energy particle physics experiments that has been modified in different ways for use in PET. The principle of operation is the detection of an electron (i.e. an electron avalanche) on planes of closely spaced fine wires ( 1 mm apart) held at a high electric potential. Cathode and anode wires are arranged orthogonally to... 

---