Development of a GEM-based time projection chamber prototype for low-energy rare-isotope beam experiments

Abstract

In this study, we developed a time projection chamber (TPC) prototype with gas electron multipliers (GEM) to evaluate the basic performance of the GEM-based TPC for the rare-isotope beam experiments to be conducted at the RAON heavy-ion facility. The TPC prototype has a drift volume of 10 x 10 x 15 cm(3), and we operated it in an Ar/CH4 gas mixture (90/10). The TPC data acquisition system collected 256 pad signals in full-readout mode using cosmic-ray muons and alpha particles from an(241) Am source. The measured spatial resolutions on the pad plane and along the drift direction were 350 mu m and 250 mu m, respectively. We also discussed the tracking performance of the future active target TPC with a 20 AMeV Be-12 beam.