The KLOE drift chamber

The tracking detector of the KLOE experiment is 4m diameter, 3.3 m length drift chamber, designed to contain a large fraction of the decays of low- energy K-1 produced at the Frascati DA phi DNE phi -factory. The chamber is made by a thin carbon fiber structure and operated with a helium-based gas mixture in order to minimise conversion of low-energy photons and multiple scattering inside the sensitive volume. The tracking information is provided by 58 layers of stereo wires defing 12,582 cells, 2 x 2 cm(2) in size in the 12 innermost layers and 3 x 3 cm(2) in the outer ones. Details of the chamber design, calibration procedure and tracking performances are presented. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. RI Gauzzi, Paolo/D-2615-2009; valente, paolo/A-6640-2010; ANTONELLI, ANTONELLA/C-6238-2011; Bellini, Fabio/D-1055-2009; Di Domenico, Antonio/G-6301-2011; De Lucia, Erika/D-2250-2011; Passalacqua, Luca/F-5127-2011; branchini, paolo/A-4857-2011; Murtas, Fabrizio/B-5729-2012