Experimental and numerical studies on the effect of SF₆in a glass RPC

Abstract

The India based Neutrino Observatory (INO) collaboration is planning to build a 50 kton magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) detector to study neutrino oscillations and measure their associated parameters. ICAL will use 28,800 glass Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) of 2m × 2m size to be operated in the avalanche mode, as its active detector elements. As a part of detector R & D to develop the RPCs, we studied the effect of Sulfur hexaflouride (SF6) when it is added in small amount to the gas composition used for running the RPCs. In this paper, we present a comparative study of charge development on the RPC pick-up electrodes for different concentrations of SF6 in the RPC gas medium using simulation and experimental data.