Effect of glass thickness variations on the performance of RPC detectors

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different glass thicknesses in RPC detectors affect their efficiency, noise, timing, and charge distribution to optimize detector design for the INO's ICAL project.

Contribution

It provides experimental data on RPC performance variations with glass thickness, aiding in the design optimization of large-scale neutrino detectors.

Findings

Thinner glasses improve detector efficiency.

Optimal thickness balances noise and timing resolution.

Performance metrics vary significantly with glass thickness.

Abstract

The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is planning to build a magnetized iron calorimeter detector (ICAL) in which Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) will be the active detector elements. A study of the performance of RPCs, made using electrodes of various thicknesses, is pivotal in optimizing the design parameters of the ICAL RPCs. We fabricated RPCs with glasses of various thicknesses and studied their performance in the same environmental conditions. A study of detector efficiency, noise rate, time resolution and charge distribution is presented in this paper.