Measurement of gas electron multiplier (GEM) detector characteristics

The High Energy Physics group of the University of Texas at Arlington has been developing gas electron multiplier detectors to use them as sensitive gap detectors in digital hadron calorimeters for the International Linear Collider, a future high energy particle accelerator. For this purpose, we constructed numerous GEM detectors that employ double GEM layers. In this study, two kinds of prototype GEM detectors were tested; one with 28×28 cm² active area double GEM structure with a 3 mm drift gap, a 1 mm transfer gap and a 1 mm induction gap and the other with two 3×3 cm² GEM foils in the amplifier stage with a 5 mm drift gap, a 2 mm transfer gap and a 1 mm induction gap. The detectors' characteristics from exposure to high-energy charged particles and other radiations were measured using cosmic rays and ⁵⁵Fe radioactive source. From the ⁵⁵Fe tests, we observed two well separated characteristic X-ray emission peaks and confirmed the detectors' functionality. We also measured chamber gains to be over 6000 at a high voltage of 395 V across each GEM electrode. The responses to cosmic rays show the spectra that fit well to Landau distributions as expected from minimum ionizing particles.