Gas filled heavy ion detectors

Abstract

I have tried to illustrate the present status of gas-filled heavy-ion detectors. Despite their venerable age, gaseous detectors are in a still ongoing stage of development, continously modified and adapted to new experimental requirements. Heavy ion experiments require detection systems which are able to record simultaneously in only one detector several parameters, like time-of-arrival, position or energy, of particles covering a broad range of specific ionization. Gas-filled detectors have proven to be well suited to meet these demands.

In the near future, the interest in heavy-ion physics will focus on higher energies and the demands for detectors will change. On the one hand, very thin detectors, like the one used up to now, will be needed to register particles from the target-fragmentation region, but the fast forward-going products with their much less specific ionization and their high multiplicity will require detection systems which resemble more and more the ones used in High Energy Physics.