Editorial: Recent advances and applications of Resistive Plate Chambers

Abstract

This Focus Point concerns four different applications of a particle detector type, the Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC), conceived by V.V. Parkhomchuk et al. [1] in the 1970s. Owing to the steady progress made over the past decades in improving its key features, this detector is still widely used in High-Energy Physics (HEP) experiments and it has increasingly being adopted in various other fields. The RPC is a gaseous detector featuring an excellent time resolution comparable or, in more recent designs, even sensibly better than traditional spark chambers. As a consequence of the demonstration that RPCs can be manufactured by using cheap and widely available plastic materials [2], this detector has become, since the 1980s, a very cost-effective solution for covering very large detection surfaces (above 100m). These features, together with the capability to work in magnetic fields, have made RPCs the cutting edge choice for designing large trigger systems for HEP experiments. For instance, RPCs covering a total sensitive surface of 15000m have been deployed for the muon trigger arrays of the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC. The last years have seen flourishing innovative designs that considerably enlarged the application areas of RPCs. The contributions selected for this Focus Point represent some remarkable examples of novel applications of RPCs concerning: