[en] The design of a high speed Sorting Processor ASIC is presented. It was designed in BiCMOS 0.8 μm technology and its aim is to reorder and provide the four highest words among eight input words, in decreasing order. This chip is the main component of the sorting tree of the Trigger Muon System of the CMS experiment

[en] The analytical solutions of two kinds of Raman-Nath-type equations are found by a method which avoids recourse to techniques of operatorial time-ordering and is based instead on two special cases of the dual of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula

[en] An original technique has been developed, which, using layers of Gd converter, is apt to make Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) detectors sensitive also to thermal neutrons. This technique presents the advantages to be very simple, low cost, and applicable easily also to large surfaces. For the first time such a kind of RPCs have been constructed and exposed to a neutron beam to ascertain precisely their performance. The very encouraging results, together with the fact that they are still far from the theoretical limit achievable in the best configuration, lead us to continue along this path. The idea of putting together a conceptually simple and robust detector, with an easily made neutron converter makes this device potentially full of possible applications both in High-Energy Physics and for industry or social fields

[en] We present a construction procedure suitable to make Resistive Plate Chambers detectors sensitive also to thermal neutrons. This procedure, consisting in coating the inner surface of one of the RPC Bakelite electrodes with a mixture of linseed oil and Gd203, is very simple, cheap, and suitable to be employed for industrial, medical or de-mining applications. Here the results of extensive tests aimed to asset the performance of two prototypes of Gd-RPCs are shown. While the detection efficiency to thermal neutrons for a standard not Gd-coated RPC results to be about 0.1%, Gd-RPCs reach, in stand-alone, absolute efficiencies of about 10%, and, when two of these detectors are coupled together, more than 15%. In addition RPCs have excellent time resolution and good imaging performance. This new type, position sensitive gas detector can be operated at atmospheric pressure, is light-weighted, has low γ-ray sensitivity, and is easy to build and handle even when large areas are to be covered

[en] The construction and the operation of a scintillator hodoscope used in an intense beam is described. By using a fast scintillator (Pilot U), a XP1910 photomultiplier and an electronic chain, employng a fast zero crossing discriminator located close to the hodoscope and a differential discriminator as receiver in the counting room, a two pulse separation of 6 nsec per channel and a time resolution (sigma) of 210 psec were obtained

[en] UV lasers for the calibration of gaseous detectors have seen newfound employment with current-generation micro-pattern gaseous detectors (MPGDs), especially those devices not suitable for tests with traditional sources (e.g. cosmic rays or X-ray beams) by design constraints. An apparatus made of a UV laser designed for the characterization of the fast timing MPGD (FTM) is here described, together with the measurements of gain curve and electron drift velocity performed on a prototype of Time Projection GEM (TPG) to validate the setup.

[en] Measurements on longitudinal and lateral hadronic shower development in lead at 13 and 20 GeV are presented. It is shown that the longitudinal shower profile can be parametrized by a two component formula. A fast hadronic shower simulation method based on parametrization is described together with a possible method to introduce fluctuation in the shower development. A comparison between the simulation and data is also presented. (orig.)

[en] In this paper the authors describe the construction and the operation of a scintillator hodoscope used in an intense beam. By using a fast scintillator (Pilot U), an XP1910 photomultiplier, and an appropriate electronic chain, a two-pulse separation of 6 ns per channel and a time resolution (sigma) of 210 ps were obtained

[en] New results about the simulation of Resistive Plate Chambers are reported; particular emphasis is put in the understanding of charge spectra in regions where deviations from the pure avalanche mode of operation can be present

[en] Interactions of 200 GeV protons and antiprotons on hydrogen, argon and xenon targets were studied with a streamer chamber vertex spectrometer at the CERN SPS. Results on multiplicities, rapidity distributions and correlations are presented and compared with predictions of current models. (orig.)