A transition radiation detector interleaved with low-density targets for the NOE experiment

The NOE Collaboration has proposed a transition radiation detector (TRD) interleaved with marble targets to tag the electron decay channel of τ leptons produced by ντ, eventually originated by νμ oscillations in a long base line experiment. A reduced scale TRD detector prototype has been built and exposed to an electron/pion beam at the CERN PS. Discrimination capabilities between electrons and both charged and neutral pions, representing the main source of background for our measurement, have been determined obtaining rejection factors of the order of the tenth of percent for charged pions, and of a few percent for the neutral pion, matching the experiment requirements. The capabilities of this detector to measure the energy released by particles that start showering inside the targets are shown. A momentum resolution σp/p≤40% is found for muons in the range of 1–7 GeV/c.