Feasibility of measurements of cosmic ray composition by means of RPC digital read out in ARGO-YBJ
- Resource Type
- Authors
- M. Iacovacci; L. Saggese; T. Di Girolamo; S. Mastroianni
- Source
- Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 533:55-59
- Subject
- Physics
Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Range (particle radiation)
Resistive touchscreen
Physics::Instrumentation and Detectors
Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Detector
Astrophysics::Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmic ray
STRIPS
Charged particle
law.invention
Nuclear physics
law
Instrumentation
Single layer
Argo
- Language
- ISSN
- 0168-9002
The ARGO-YBJ experiment is currently under construction at the Yangbajing Cosmic Ray Laboratory (4300 m a.s.l.). The detector will cover 74 × 78 m 2 with a single layer of Resistive Plate Counters (RPCs), surrounded by a partially instrumented guard ring. Signals from each RPC are picked up with 80 read out strips 6.7 cm wide and 62 cm long. The strip read out allows one to count the number of secondary charged particles from air showers induced by cosmic rays with an energy threshold of a few TeV. In this paper, we show that the digital response of the RPC can be used to discriminate between different models concerning the composition of the primary cosmic rays up to an energy of a few hundreds of TeV. In order to extend the dynamical range up to PeV energies, an analog read out has been implemented by instrumenting each RPC with two large size electrodes (Big Pads).