Simulation of the neutron response of a glass-resistive plate chamber in the energy range 10−10 MeV

Abstract

The neutron sensitivity of a glass-resistive plate chamber (RPC) has been simulated using GEANT4 MC codes for the neutrons in the energy range 10−10MeV–10 GeV. The glass-RPC has many advantageous features such as high rate capability, it is easy to handle and can be built on an industrial scale. For an evaluation of their efficiency, a simulation test of the glass-RPC detectors has been performed in order to investigate their performance for neutrons detection. When compared to previous works on bakelite-RPC the results are comparatively higher. As the density of the glass electrode is higher than the bakelite electrode, relatively higher sensitivity results at higher neutron energies were obtained using these types of RPCs. For an isotropic neutron source using a GEANT4 Standard MC package, sensitivity, sn<3.894×10−2 at <10 GeV by double-gap glass-RPC has been observed. For the same neutron source with a GEANT4 Low MC package, double-gap glass-RPC sensitivity, sn<4.042×10−2 at <10 GeV has been measured. Similar but lower simulation results of the RPC detector have been observed for parallel neutron source configurations. The obtained simulated results were applied to the large hadron collider (LHC)/(CMS) compact muon solenoid radiation environment both in the endcap and barrel regions. The average sensitivities, expected hit rates in those regions were estimated. Additionally, a comparison between the present glass-RPCs with the previous bakelite-RPCs neutrons simulation results has been performed.