Discharge studies in micromegas detectors in a 150 GeV/c pion beam

Abstract A detailed study of several Micromegas detectors prototyped for the COMPASS and CLAS12 experiments is presented. Using a 150 GeV/ c pion beam, the discharge probability was measured for several detector variants including bulk and non-bulk Micromegas. A detector equipped with an additional GEM foil as pre-amplification stage was also tested. A resistive coating of the readout strips was found to reduce the amplitude of the discharge by at least two orders of magnitude which was below the detection limit of the experimental setup. The effects of the micro-mesh type and material were investigated as well as the influence of the drift gap. Response in the presence of a 1.5 T transverse magnetic field was also studied. The measurements presented were performed during a RD51 beam test period.