Development and characterization of single gap glass RPC

Abstract: India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) facility is going to have a 50 kton magnetized Iron CALorimeter (ICAL) detector for precision measurements of neutrino oscillations using atmospheric neutrinos. The proposed ICAL detector will be a stack of magnetized iron plates (acting as target material) interleaved with glass Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) as the active detector elements. An RPC is a gaseous detector made up of two parallel electrode plates having high bulk resistivity like that of float glass and bakelite. For the ICAL detector, glass is preferred over bakelite as it does not need any kind of surface treatment to achieve better surface uniformity and also the cost of associated electronics is reduced. Under the detector R&D efforts for the proposed glass RPC detector, a few glass RPCs of 1m X 1m dimension are fabricated procuring glass of ~ 2 mm thickness from one of the Indian glass manufacturers (Asahi). In the present paper, we report the characterization of RPC based on leakage current study, muon detection efficiency and noise rate studies with varying gas compositions.