  The MEG-II experiment searches for the lepton flavor violating decay: mu in
electron and gamma. The reconstruction of the positron trajectory uses a
cylindrical drift chamber operated with a mixture of He and iC4H10 gas. It is
important to provide a stable performance of the detector in terms of its
electron transport parameters, avalanche multiplication, composition and purity
of the gas mixture. In order to have a continuous monitoring of the quality of
gas, we plan to install a small drift chamber, with a simple geometry that
allows to measure very precisely the electron drift velocity in a prompt way.
This monitoring chamber will be supplied with gas coming from the inlet and the
outlet of the detector to determine if gas contaminations originate inside the
main chamber or in the gas supply system. The chamber is a small box with
cathode walls, that define a highly uniform electric field inside two adjacent
drift cells. Along the axis separating the two drift cells, four staggered
sense wires alternated with five guard wires collect the drifting electrons.
The trigger is provided by two 90Sr weak calibration radioactive sources placed
on top of a two thin scintillator tiles telescope. The whole system is designed
to give a prompt response (within a minute) about drift velocity variations at
the 0.001 level.
