The FOOT drift chamber performance

The main goal of the FOOT (FragmentatiOn Of Target) experiment is to measure the differential cross sections (d(2) sigma/d Omega . dE) of fragments produced in nuclear interactions relevant for particle therapy and space radioprotection fields. In the FOOT experimental setup, a drift chamber detector is adopted to measure the incoming beam direction and position, identifying also pre-target fragmentation events. The space-time relations calibration and the performance assessment of the drift chamber have been conducted with proton beams at 228 and 80MeV of kinetic energies, exploiting an external telescope composed of different layers of microstrip silicon tracker. The detector spatial resolution has been measured to be of 60-100 mu m in the central part of the cell. The efficiency has been measured as a function of the drift distance and it is about 0.98 in the central part of the cell, but it drops exponentially close to the cell border. The procedures adopted to calibrate the drift chamber and to analyse the detector performances will be presented.