Drift Chambers

The drift chambers at the CLAS12 detector at Jefferson Lab are examples of "wire chambers." A "wire chamber" is a large box with small diameter fine wires crossing from one side to the other, and filled with a gas (JLab uses a combination of argon and carbon dioxide).

Setup
Some of the wires in the drift chamber have positive voltage and some have negative voltage. The electrons are attracted to the wires with positive voltage because the electrons have a negative charge. When the electrons interact with these wires, they create an electric signal that is then recorded by a computer. The track of the particle can be determined by observing which wires had electric signals. The accuracy of the tracking improves if the time of the signals is measured; this way, the distance the particle traveled from the wire can be estimated.

Specifications
The drift chambers have 18 wire chambers, with 2 superlayers of 6 layers by 112 wires. Each cell has a spatial resolution of 250-350 micrometers.

Software
CED (CLAS Event Display) features a display panel for Drift Chambers XY.