Fluid modeling of resistive plate chambers: impact of transport data on development of streamers and induced signals

Abstract

We discuss the implementation of transport data in modeling of resistive plate chambers (RPCs), which are used for timing and triggering purposes in many high energy physics experiments. Particularly, we stress the importance of making a distinction between flux and bulk transport data when non-conservative collisions, such as attachment and/or ionization, are present. A 1.5-dimensional fluid model with photoionization is employed to demonstrate how the duality of transport data affects the calculated signals of the ATLAS triggering RPC and ALICE timing RPC used at CERN, and also a timing RPC with high content. It is shown that in the case of timing RPCs, the difference between the induced charges calculated using flux and bulk transport data can reach several hundred percent at lower operating electric fields. The effects of photoionization and space charge are also discussed.