Silicon drift chamber prototype for the upgrade of the UA6 experiment at the CERN pp collider

A large-area (∼ 4 × 4 cm2) silicon drift chamber has been designed and constructed in order to investigate its possible use in the UA6 experiment. The drift chamber will supply unambiguously (x, y) space points on each track; each arm of the UA6 spectrometer could be provided with two layers of drift detectors.