Beam Aborts in PEP-II Rings and Lingering Drift Chamber Currents

TL;DRAbstract

The BABAR detector at SLAC was designed to study CP-violation in B-meson decays from electron-positron collisions in the PEP-II electron-positron storage rings. Background radiation in the High Energy Ring (HER) and Low Energy Ring (LER) of PEP-II has the potential to damage the sensitive equipment in the BABAR detector. As a result, the beams in the HER and LER can be aborted to prevent such damage. In the span of a few microseconds, the HER and LER currents drop from, for example, 1450 micro Amps and 2300 micro Amps, respectively, to zero. At this time the voltage in the Drift Chamber is rapidly ramped down from a potential of 1930 V to a safe potential of 800 V, thus we would expect the currents in the Drift Chamber to quickly go to zero once the beams are aborted. However, we observe an average 15 second delay in the measured time it takes for all current in the Drift Chamber to fall below 1 micro Amp. This delay has been hypothesized as an instrumentation issue and not as a physic

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