Simulation of temperature dependence of RPC operation

The effect of ambient temperature on the performance of a resistive plate chamber (RPC) has been studied by simulating the avalanche development inside the gas gap and considering the temperature variations of avalanche parameters and the plates’ resistivity. For both avalanche and streamer modes of operation, it is shown that the induced signal increases with ambient temperature and the charge spectrum shifts toward higher charge values. The results of simulation at low particles rates show that the temperature dependency originates just from the variations of avalanche characteristics with temperature. The simulation clearly reconfirms the experimental fact that the detector efficiency is a function of scaled high voltage with temperature. The simulation results at high particles flux densities show that the strong degradation of plates’ resistivity with temperature improves the efficiency and rate capability of the detector in agreement with available experimental reports.