Large size GEM for Super Bigbite Spectrometer (SBS) polarimeter for Hall A 12 GeV program at JLab

We report on the R&D effort in the design and construction of a large size Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) for the Proton Polarimeter Back Tracker (BT) of the Super Bigbite Spectrometer (SBS) in Hall A at Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory (JLab). The SBS BT GEM trackers consist of two sets of five large GEM chambers of size GO x 200 cm(2). The GEM chamber is a vertical stack of four GEM modules, each with an active area of GO x 50 cm(2). We have built and tested several prototypes and the construction of GEM modules for SBS BT is ongoing. We describe in this paper the design and construction of the GEM module prototype as well as the preliminary results on performance from tests carried out in our detector lab and during test beam at Fermi National Laboratory (Fermilab). (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.