Prototype study of 0.1% X_0 and MHz/cm^2 tolerant Resistive Plate Chamber with Diamond-Like Carbon electrodes

A novel Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC) was designed with Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) electrodes and performance studies were carried out for 384μ m gap configuration with a 2 cm×2 cm prototype. The use of thin films coated with DLC enables an ultra-low mass design of < 0.1% X_0 with up to a four-layer configuration. At the same time, 42 efficiency, and 180 ps timing resolution per layer were achieved in a measurement performed under a 1 MHz/cm^2 non-MIP charged particle beam. In addition, we propose a further improved design for a 20 cm-scale detector that can achieve 90 an even higher 4 MHz/cm^2 beam. In this paper, we describe the detector design, present the results of performance measurements, and characterize the rate capability of the DLC-based RPCs with a performance projection for an improved design.