What is the real gas gain of a standard GEM?

We have observed very high gains (up to 7000) from GEMs with ‘standard’ parameters (kapton thickness 50 μm, pitch 120 μm, copper hole diameter 65 μm, kapton hole diameter 30 μm). This was achieved using GEMs coupled to a simple array of copper read-out strips. From the measurements of the current on all the electrodes, we conclude that the high observed gains are fully attributable to electron multiplication in the holes of the mesh, and not to electronics related effects as had been previously suggested. Furthermore, we report that this large gain may only be fully exploited when the field in the second GEM gap is high. The effect on the gain of coupling a GEM to another charge amplifying device was investigated using a GEM–PMGC combination.