  The performance of pressurized drift-tube detectors at very high background
rates has been studied at the Gamma Irradiation Facility (GIF) at CERN and in
an intense 20 MeV proton beam at the Munich Van-der-Graaf tandem accelerator
for applications in large-area precision muon tracking at high-luminosity
upgrades of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The ATLAS muon drifttube (MDT)
chambers with 30 mm tube diameter have been designed to cope with and neutron
background hit rates of up to 500 Hz/square cm. Background rates of up to 14
kHz/square cm are expected at LHC upgrades. The test results with standard MDT
readout electronics show that the reduction of the drift-tube diameter to 15
mm, while leaving the operating parameters unchanged, vastly increases the rate
capability well beyond the requirements. The development of new small-diameter
muon drift-tube (sMDT) chambers for LHC upgrades is completed. Further
improvements of tracking efficiency and spatial resolution at high counting
rates will be achieved with upgraded readout electronics employing improved
signal shaping for high counting rates.
