A New Source of Spontaneous Self-Sustaining Currents in Multiwire Proportional Chambers

The results of a study of the mechanism of occurrence of spontaneous self-sustaining currents in proportional chambers, operating as part of experiments at the LHC, are presented. The cathode of the proportional chamber dismantled from the LHCb detector, in which the occurrence of self-supporting spontaneous currents were regularly observed, was studied by AFM, Rutherford backscattering, and Raman spectroscopy. Nanocarbon structures and their fluorinated compounds were discovered in the zone of spontaneous currents of the cathode. Such formations are well known as low-threshold sources of the field emission of electrons.