A large number of high-energy and heavy-ion experiments successfully used Time Projection Chamber (TPC) as central tracker and particle identification detector. However, the performance requirements on TPC for new high-rate particle experiments great
ly exceed the abilities of traditional TPC read out by multi-wire proportional chamber (MWPC). Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detector has great potential to improve TPC performances when used as amplification device. In this paper we present the R&D activity on a new GEM-based TPC detector built as a prototype for the inner part for AMADEUS, a new experimental proposal at the DAFNE collider at Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (INFN), aiming to perform measurements of the low-energy negative kaons interactions in nuclei. In order to evaluate the GEM-TPC performances, a 10x10 cm2 prototype with a drift gap up to 15 cm has been realized. The detector was tested at the pM1 beam facility of the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) with low momentum pions and protons, without magnetic field. Drift properties of argonisobutane gas mixtures are measured and compared withMagboltz prediction. Detection efficiency and spatial resolution as a function of a large number of parameters, such as the gas gain, the drift field, the front-end electronic threshold and particle momentum, are illustrated and discussed. Particle identification capability and the measurement of the energy resolution in isobutane-based gas mixture are also reported.
The upgrade of the DA$Phi$NE machine layout requires a modification of the size and position of the inner focusing quadrupoles of KLOE-2 thus asking for the realization of two new calorimeters covering the quadrupoles area. To improve the reconstruct
ion of $K_Lto 2pi^0$ events with photons hitting the quadrupoles a calorimeter with high efficiency to low energy photons (20-300 MeV), time resolution of less than 1 ns and space resolution of few cm, is needed. To match these requirements, we are designing a tile calorimeter, QCALT, where each single tile is readout by mean of SiPM for a total granularity of 2400 channels. We show first tests of the different calorimeter components.
