166 Proceedings of the 8th SPVM National Physics Conference and Workshop

Simulation of gas properties of drift chambers using GARFIELD

Noel Lito B. Sayson, Louie T. Murcia and Hermogenes C. Gooc, Jr. Physics Department, Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology A. Bonifacio Avenue, Tibanga, 9200 Iligan City, Philippines
Drift chamber is a multi-wire chamber used to detect charged particles. Properties of a drift chamber is simulated using GARFIELD simulation program. The cell structure of the chamber is implemented and subjected to dierent magnetic elds. Gas contaminant is added to the gas mixture in the chamber at dierent percentages. With the introduction of the contaminant, gas properties of the chamber will change. Presented in this paper are the results of the simulation of the implemented drift chamber by looking at the x t relation which will be used to determine the drift velocity of the ionized gas inside the chamber.

1. Introduction Detectors are used to examine tracks made by the new particles that are produced when accelerated particles collide. One of the components of a large detector is the central tracker. A tracking device can be a drift chamber or time projection chamber [1]. One of the prototype of a drift chamber is the baby chamber. It is the smaller version of the central drift chamber (CDC) [2]. The characteristics of a drift chamber can be studied by using a simulation program, GARFIELD. This program is used to simulate two-dimensional drift chambers. It has a built-in Magboltz simulation tool to study the gas properties of the chamber. Basically, GARFIELD can create dierent chamber congurations which will use dierent gas mixtures and the chamber can be subjected to any magnetic eld intensities. 2. Baby chamber The baby chamber is constructed with the same cell structure as the 4.6 m long CDC test chamber. The cross-sectional size of the baby chamber is 26 cm 27 cm and the wire length is 40 cm. The baby chamber has three identical jet cells, each being 7 cm 10 cm in size and having 5 sense wires and a maximum drift length of 5 cm. The sense wire
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spacing is 1 cm. These sense wires are made of Au-plated W and have a diameter of 30 m. Other wires are made of Au-plated Al and are 125 m thick. The chamber gas mixture is 90% carbon dioxide (C02 ) and 10% isobutane (C4 H10 ) [3]. The cell structure of the baby chamber with the high voltage on each wire and the equipotential lines in the cell is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The cell structure of the baby chamber with the high voltage on each wire and the equipotential lines in the cell.

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Proceedings of the 8th SPVM National Physics Conference and Workshop 167

3. Simulation of gas properties For the simulation of gas properties for the chamber, the GARFIELD program is used. GARFIELD has an interface to the Magboltz program. Magboltz program is provided for the computation of electron transport properties in nearly arbitrary gas mixtures. Transport of particles, including diffusion, avalanches and current induction is treated in three dimensions irrespective of the technique used to compute the elds. Magboltz program is also used to compute for electrons, the drift velocity, the longitudinal and transverse diusion coecients as well as the Townsend and attachment coecients. The properties that will be studied are only those related to and available in Magboltz program. These include the drift velocity, diusion coecients, x t relation, Lorentz angle and Townsend, attachment and dissociation coecients. 4. Methodology 4.1. Simulation tools As prerequisite of the study, the GARFIELD version 7.1 with built-in Magboltz version 2.1 is installed on a Linux operating system. 4.2. Cell implementation A cell structure is implemented such that it is similar to the baby chamber. The chamber gas mixture is 90% carbon dioxide (C02 ) and 10% isobutane (C4 H10 ). It has 5 sense wires which are located in the center line. The sense wires have a diameter of 30 m. The potential for sense wires is 2800 V. Other wires have a diameter 125 m. The cell structure of the chamber that is used in this study is shown in Figure 2. 4.3. Gas mixture The gas that will be used in this study is 90% carbon dioxide (C02 ) and 10% isobutane (C4 H10 ). The gas contaminant that will be used is oxygen. By introducing the gas contaminant to the chamber, we can calculate the eects to its properties. The drift velocity of the electrons as well as the diusion

Figure 2. The cell structure of the chamber. coecients and other properties of the gas will change as the mixture of the gas changes due to the presence of gas contaminant. The contaminant will be introduced in dierent percentages (0%, 2%, 4%, 6%, 8% and 10%). The chamber will be subjected to dierent magnetic elds from 0 to 5 Tesla. The pressure and temperature are set to 1 atm and 300 K, respectively. 5. Results and discussions The relation between the drift distance (x) and the drift time (t) is shown in Figure 3 for magnetic eld B = 0 Tesla. It shows that at a short drift distances (less than 1 cm), the realtionship between the drift distance and drift time is not linear. This is due to the eect of the neighboring sense wires. At longer drift length (greater than 1 cm), there is linear relationship between drift time and drift lengths. For results at magnetic elds 1, 2 and 3 Tesla, the x t relation does not change much unlike when B = 4 and 5 Tesla as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. 6. Summary and recommendations The cell strcuture of a drift chamber is implemented using the GARFIELD simulation program. The gas mixture used is

168 Proceedings of the 8th SPVM National Physics Conference and Workshop

Figure 3. The x t relation for B = 0 Tesla.

Figure 5. The x t relation for B = 5 Tesla. fully implement its cell structure. There are still other gas properties to consider for the drift chamber. Also, it is recommended to study the other gas mixtures under dierent magnetic elds. 7. Acknowledgment The authors would like to thank Mr. Rob Veenhof for sharing his ideas and knowledge about this study. References 1. GLD Concept Study Group, GLD Detector Outline Document, Version1.2, available at http://ilcphys.kek.jp/gld. 2. ACFA Linear Collider Working Group, Particle Physics Experiments at JLC,KEK Report 2001, August 11, 2001. 3. H. Kuroiwa, Study of Two-track Separation in a Jet Chamber, Masters Thesis, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 1998. 4. J. Janney, A Guide to GARFIELD, April 20, 2004.

Figure 4. The x t relation for B = 4 Tesla. 90% carbon dioxide (C02 ) and 10% isobutane (C4 H10 ) which is the gas mixture used in the baby chamber. Oxygen contaminant is introduced at dierent percentages and the chamber is subjected to dierent magnetic elds. Simulation results gives a linear relationship of the drift-time and drift lengths at longer drift lengths as expected. This study aims to simulate the properties of the baby chamber thus there is a need to