USE OF A LARGE MULTICELL IONIZATION DETECTOR - THE EXTERNAL PARTICLE IDENTIFIER - IN EXPERIMENTS WITH THE BEBC HYDROGEN BUBBLE CHAMBER

Abstract Fast secondary particles from interactions of K + at 70 GeV/ c and K − at 110 GeV/ c in the BEBC hydrogen bubble chamber are identified by use of the relativistic rise of ionization in argon. The ionization is measured in a large multicell ionization counter system, the External Particle Identifier (EPI). The operation of this hybrid system, the calibration and the procedures of off-line analysis leading to particle identification are described. For a sample of 9283 secondary particles collected in the K + p experiment, we present the measurements of ionization, and the determination of acceptance and identification efficiencies. The momentum-dependent populations of pions, kaons and protons have been obtained. Track by track identification procedures yielding samples of pions and kaons with a contamination ⪅ 12% are discussed. A study of the resolution of the EPI in these experimental conditions shows average values in a range of 7.6% to 11% depending on the number of ionization samples remaining after removal of background. These values extrapolate to a value consistent with the 6.6% fwhm measured over the whole device for single particles during calibration with a 50 GeV/ c π − beam.