Study of a micromegas chamber in a neutron beam

The micromegas detectors are proposed as one of the options to upgrade the ATLAS muon spectrometer in the very forward/backward region. One of the problems of all detectors in the LHC and especially the ones near the beam pipe is the high neutron background. A study of a tracking micromegas detector with high flux neutrons, focusing on the sparking properties, is performed for the first time. The neutrons are supplied by the Tandem accelerator, at the N.C.S.R. ''Demokritos'' in Athens, which can provide quasi monochromatic neutrons with energies up to 25.7 MeV. The first results of this study are presented. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.