Two-dimensional position sensitive transition radiation detector

A new transition radiation detector (TRD) prototype foreseen to fulfill the requirements of the TRD subdetector of the CBM experiment at FAIR has been designed, constructed and tested with electrons and pions of a few GeV/c. The detector prototype was build with the original TRD architecture which preserves the high conversion efficiency of transition radiation in a single TRD layer. This TRD architecture is based on two multiwire proportional chambers readout by a common double-sided pad read-out electrode. The triangular shape of the readout pads gives access to the position information in both coordinates which defines the readout electrode plane. Pion efficiency as a function of number of TRD layers and position resolution were studied using electron and pion beams delivered by PS at CERN. Dedicated front-end electronics, designed for high counting rate environment was used. An extrapolated pion efficiency of 0.5% for a six layer TRD configuration at 90% electron efficiency using a regular foil radiator was obtained. The position resolution across the pads is of the order of 320 μ m and along the pads of 5.5 mm.