Position resolution of a high efficiency transition radiation detector for high counting rate environments

A prototype Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) with a novel configuration was built and tested. The prototype consists of two individual multiwire proportional chambers (MWPCs) that share a thin common central pad readout electrode. In this way, the TR detection efficiency increases at no penalty in counting speed or in number of readout channels. Measurements with electrons, pions and protons with momentum up to 2 GeV/c   show a good position resolution smaller than 200μm for tracks with normal incidence and no significant deterioration of the resolution is observed up to a particle flux of 200kHz/cm2. These results open the possibility of constructing detectors for tracking and e/πe/π discrimination even for high counting rate experiments with a reasonable number of layers. The results on position resolution as well as on rate capability of the prototypes are presented.