A New Approach for Constructing Sensitive Surfaces: The Gaseous Pixel Chamber

Future Hadron colliders are expected to have an event rate so high that it will make the operation of gaseous wire chambers very difficult, except maybe for muon detection. The electrostatic attraction between the anode and cathode wires limit the density of anode wires. Many attempts have been made to construct a gaseous chamber with the anodes attached to an insulating film. Recently there have been very successful chambers built with an anode pitch of 200 mm. These are known as gaseous microstrip chambers. We also have built chambers on insulating foils, but of a completely different design. This design is more pixel in geometry and thus is known as the gaseous pixel chamber. Moreover this surface operates in limited streamer mode and is capable of working at high rates. We present here the current status of this device.