CHARACTERISTICS OF A DIGITIZED DISCHARGE HODOSCOPE

Digitized discharge planes were studied to determine their utility in high energy hodoscope experiments. One plane consists of a 6 x 6 in. frame covered on one side with a conducting sheet and on the other with 64 parallel wires. The thin enclosed volume is filled with a neon-heliumalcohol mixture. Each wire passes through a ferrite memory core to ground. The conducting sheet is pulsed to a high voltage, in the manner of spark chambers, after passage of an ionizing particle. Three such planes were tested in a high energy proton beam. An efficiency of 99% was achieved with an average of 1.5 to 2 wires involved per discharge. The spatial resolution was 0.5 mm. Data are presented on efficiency, number of wires per discharge, dead time, and temporal and spatial resolution. (auth)