The PEP Quark Search Proportional Chambers

Proportional chambers are used in the PEP Free Quark Search to identify and remove possible background sources such as particles traversing the edges of counters, to permit geometric corrections to the dE/dx and TOF information from the scintillator and Cerenkov counters, and to look for possible high cross section quarks. The present beam pipe has a thickness of 0.007 interaction lengths (λi) and is followed in both arms (each with 45° ≤ θ ≤ 135°. Δ = 90°) by 5 proportional chambers, each 0.0008 λi thick with 32 channels of pulse height readout, and by 3 thin scintillator planes, each 0.003 λi thick. Following this thin front end, each arm of the detector has 8 layers of scintillator (one with scintillating light pipes) interspersed with 4 proportional chambers and a layer of lucite Cerenkov counters. Both the calculated ion statistics and measurements using He-CH4 gas in a test chamber indicate that the chamber efficiencies should be > 98% for q = 1/3. The Landau spread measured in the test was equal to that observed for normal q = 1 traversals. One scintillator plane and thin chamber in each arm will have an extra set of ADC's with a wide gate bracketing the normal one so timing errors and tails of earlier pulses should not produce fake quarks.