Design and performance of micro-channel plate based particle tracking detector for astrophysical (α, p) reactions

Abstract The micro-channel plate based particle tracking detector described here is part of the detector system used in a series of measurements of astrophysical ( α , p) reactions, which will be studied at the Radioactive Ion Beam Line in Lanzhou, China. This detector will provide on a particle-by-particle basis tracking information and arrival time of radioactive beams with intensities up to 1 0 5 particles per second. The key requirements of the experiments to the detector are that the spatial resolution is below 1 mm, the time resolution is better than 1 ns and the energy loss is less than for a parallel plate avalanche counter. The current prototype is composed of two micro-channel plate detectors with a compact electrostatic field construction and a delay-line readout. Based on the results of α -particle tests, one micro-channel detector can achieve a position resolution of 552 μ m full width at half maximum on the x axis and 735 μ m on the y axis. The tracking system can achieve 705 ps time resolution and can cope with a beam intensity of up to 5 × 1 0 6 particles per second.