Test of a four-gap resistive plate chamber with cosmic muons and high-rate gamma rays

We report a new development of a phenolic four-gap resistive plate chamber (RPC) for use as a high-rate particle trigger in high-energy physics experiments. In the current study, a prototype RPC equipped with four 1-mm-thick gaps made from high-pressure-laminated (HPL) resistive plates has been designed and built. The current detector R&D aims to reduce the probability of radiation-induced degradation of the core detector components of the RPCs, the gas gaps, as well as to improve the detection rate capability. The detector characteristics of the four-gap RPC were obtained though a series of tests with cosmic muons and gamma rays and were compared with those of the typical 2-mm thick double-gap RPCs currently used in the CMS experiment at the LHC and in the PHENIX experiment at the RHIC.