Identification of High Transverse-Momentum Hadrons with a Ring-Imaging Cerenkov Counter

We have constructed and operated a large aperture ring-imaging Cerenkov counter in a high transverse-momentum experiment at Fermilab. We used multistep proportional chambers with a He/TEA photosensitive gas mixture to observe approximately 3.5 photons per relativistic particle. Hadron identification is obtained with good efficiency from threshold to 250 GeV/c.