A high rate and high timing photoelectric detector prototype with RPC structure

TL;DR

This paper presents a prototype gas photodetector with RPC structure that achieves high rate capability and excellent time resolution, suitable for high-energy physics experiments and gas testing.

Contribution

The development of a high-rate, high-resolution RPC-based gas photodetector using low resistivity glass and optimized gas mixtures is novel.

Findings

Achieved 20.3 ps time resolution at high gas gain

Demonstrated high rate capability with low resistivity glass

Optimized gas mixture reduces photon feedback

Abstract

To meet the need for a high counting rate and high time resolution in future high-energy physics experiments, a prototype of a gas photodetector with an RPC structure was developed. Garfield++ simulated the detector's performance, and the single photoelectron performance of different mixed gases was tested with an ultraviolet laser. The detector uses a low resistivity ($\sim1.4\cdot 10^{10} \Omega\cdot cm$) float glass so that its rate capability is significantly higher than that of ordinary float glass($10^{12}\sim10^{14} \Omega\cdot cm$), the laser test results show that in MRPC gas($R134a/iC_{4}H_{10}/SF_{6}(85/10/5)$), the single photoelectron time resolution is best to reach 20.3 ps at a gas gain of $7\cdot 10^{6}$. Increasing the proportion of $iC_{4}H_{10}$ can effectively reduce the probability of photon feedback, without changing the time resolution and maximum gain. In addition to being applied to high-precision time measurement scenarios (eg:T0, TOF), the detector can also quantitatively test the single photoelectron performance of different gases and will be used to find eco-friendly MRPC gases.