The big wheels of ATLAS

The ATLAS cavern is filling up at an impressive rate. The installation of the first of the big wheels of the muon spectrometer, a thin gap chamber (TGC) wheel, was completed in September. The muon spectrometer will include four big moving wheels at each end, each measuring 25 metres in diameter. Of the eight wheels in total, six will be composed of thin gap chambers for the muon trigger system and the other two will consist of monitored drift tubes (MDTs) to measure the position of the muons (see Bulletin No. 13/2006). The installation of the 688 muon chambers in the barrel is progressing well, with three-quarters of them already installed between the coils of the toroid magnet.