A Drift Chamber System for Use in a High Rate Environment

A system of short drift distance (0.125") drift chambers is described. This system is being built for use in the Brookhaven National Laboratory Multiparticle Spectrometer. These chambers will be able to handle beam rates of several million/pulse and give a spatial resolution of the order of 150 ¿m. Cathode readout will provide unique 3-dimensional points for each track. The readout will utilize three custom built integrated circuits, a four channel amplifier-shaper, a four channel discriminator and a four channel shift register delay and time digitizer. A summary of test results on a prototype is also given.