Development of a sealed MRPC with high time resolution

Abstract

Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPC) are used in the Solenoidal Large Intensity Device (SoLID) at Jefferson Lab (JLab) to identify kaons. SoLID requires 20 ps for the total time resolution. In this paper, a sealed MRPC (sMRPC) prototype with 4 stacks and 7 uniform gas gaps is designed to reach a good time resolution. At the same time, sMRPC can lower the airflow through the chamber to reduce the greenhouse pollution. Both analog signal discrimination & TDC electronic system and waveform sampling electronic system are used for the readout of the signal. In cosmic tests, we compared the time resolution of these electronic readout methods and measured the efficiency of the sealed MRPC. The preliminary result shows that the MRPC prototype has an efficiency higher than 95%. The sealed MRPC prototype using waveform sampling system, has a time resolution of 40 ps, while a 54 ps time resolution is obtained using analog signal discrimination & TDC electronic system.