Gas Electron multipliers for low energy beams

Gas Electron Multipliers (GEM) find their way to more and more applications in beam instrumentation. Gas Electron Multiplication uses a very similar physical phenomenon to that of Multi Wire Proportional Chambers (MWPC) but for small profile monitors they are much more cost efficient both to produce and to maintain. This paper presents the new GEM profile monitors intended to replace the MWPCs currently used at CERN’s low energy Antiproton Decelerator (AD). It will be shown how GEMs overcome the documented problems of profile measurements with MWPCs for low energy beams, where the interaction of the beam with the detector has a large influence on the measured profile. Results will be shown of profile measurements performed at 5 MeV using four different GEM prototypes, with discussion on the possible use of GEMs at even lower energies needed at the AD in 2013