A drift chamber with a new type of straws for operation in vacuum

Abstract A 2150×2150 mm 2 registration area drift chamber capable of working in vacuum is presented. Thin-wall tubes (straws) of a new type are used in the chamber. A large share of these 9.80 mm diameter drift tubes are made in Dubna from metalized 36 µm Mylar film welded along the generatrix using an ultrasonic welding machine created at JINR. The main features of the chamber and some characteristics of the drift tubes are described. Four such chambers with the X, Y, U, V coordinates each, containing 7168 straws in total, are designed and produced at JINR and CERN. They are installed in the vacuum volume of the NA62 setup in order to study the ultra-rare decay K + → π + v v ¯ and to search for and study rare meson decays. In autumn 2014 the chambers were used for the first time for the data taking in the experimental run of the NA62 at CERN׳s SPS.