T. Yamamura

Study of black holes with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Abstract.We evaluate the potential of the ATLAS detector for discovering black holes produced at the LHC, as predicted in models with large extra dimensions where quantum gravity is at the TeV scale. We assume that black holes decay by Hawking evaporation to all Standard Model particles democratically. We comment on the possibility to estimate the Planck scale.

A study with a small prototype TPC for the international linear collider experiment

A time projection chamber (TPC) is a strong candidate for the central tracker of the international linear collider (ILC) experiment and we have been conducting a series of cosmic ray experiments under a magnetic field up to 4 T, using a small prototype TPC with a replaceable readout device: multi-wire proportional chamber (MWPC) or gas electron multiplier (GEM). We first confirmed that the MWPC readout could not be a fall-back option of the ILC-TPC under a strong axial magnetic field of 4 T since its spatial resolution suffered severely from the so called E × B effect in the vicinity of the wire planes. The GEM readout, on the other hand, was found to be virtually free from the E × B effect as had been expected and gave the resolution determined by the transverse diffusion of the drift electrons (diffusion limited). Furthermore, GEMs allow a wider choice of gas mixtures than MWPCs. Among the gases we tried so far a mixture of Ar-CF4-isobutane, in which MWPCs could be prone to discharges, seems promising as the operating gas of the ILC-TPC because of its small diffusion constant especially under a strong magnetic field. We report the measured drift properties of this mixture including the diffusion constant as a function of the electric field and compare them with the predictions of Magboltz. Also presented is the spatial resolution of a GEM-based ILC-TPC estimated from the measurement with the prototype.