A 50 × 50 CM² rich detector prototype for ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

A 50 × 50 cm² RICH detector was tested with hadron beams of 200 GeV/c to determine the resolution and efficiency of the system. Single photon detection has been achieved with a multistep avalanche chamber in conjunction with a CCD camera equipped with a 35 mm $\text{f}\text{1.4}$ lens coupled to a two stage image intensifier. The results show that for the number of photons detected with the present setup and the geometry used in proximity focusing a standard deviation of 7.5 mrad per event has been achieved for the reconstruction of the Cherenkov angle.