Speaker
Description
The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) collaboration has proposed to build a 50kton magnetized Iron Calorimeter (ICAL). Main aims of this experiment are to precisely measure the atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters and to determine the ordering of neutrino masses. The collaboration has chosen Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) made up of float glass electrodes of 1.9 m × 1.8 m in area as the active detector elements and is going to deploy about 28,800 of them in the ICAL detector. Operation and the performance of RPC detector are known to mostly depend on the surface quality, bulk, and electrical properties of the electrode materials. Since ICAL is going to deploy RPC detectors in an unprecedented scale, it is imperative that we study these aspects in detail. Therefore, systematic characterization studies on the glass samples from various manufacturers have been carried out in order to arrive at a better understanding on the choice of electrodes for long term operation of RPCs. Results of these studies will be presented.
