1. Control of the RPC ageing effects in the ATLAS chambers at the GIF - X5 CERN irradiation facility Siena 2004 Siena, 24/05/2004 By G. Aielli on behalf of the Atlas RPC collaboration: Lecce, Napoli and Roma2

2. Ageing test at X5 basics 6 gas volumes (3 ATLAS BMLD units) under test since the end of 2002 at the GIF-X5 of CERN Typical counting rate under full source 700 Hz/cm2 (expected rate in the barrel 10-20 Hz/cm 2 ) 1 Atlas equivalent ageing year  30 mC/cm 2 integrated charge including a safety factor >5 (10 9 expected counts/cm 2 x 30 pC/count) The Gamma Irradiation Facility is located downstream of the X5 beam final dump. Inside this zone, a 137 Cs source (20 Ci)produces an intense flux of 660 keV photons which can be (nominally) reduced up to a factor 10000 using a system of lead filters.

3. Setup for the external RH control

4. Experimental setup  Three production chambers (BML-D) are installed on the beam line, equipped with a movable trigger system made of 3 layers of plastic scintillators suitable also for a cosmic rays run.  The 3 chambers have 2 detector layers, each made of 2 gas volumes. Each gas volume has 2 readout panels to read both coordinates. One track can be reconstructed using up to 6 point  Signals from the chambers are read out by the TDCs developed for the KLOE experiment, and acquired with a LabView program.  The DCS system (also implemented in LabView) records LV and HV values, gap currents, gas composition, together with all relevant environmental data such as pressure, temperature, relative humidity.  The HV is automatically corrected for the gas density effect to a standard condition of 980 mbar and 20°C. The gas relative humidity can be set by the user and is also monitored by the DCS.

5. Main historical events CLOSED LOOP OPERATION  At the beginning of July 03 the gas closed loop was introduced on 4 out of the 6 tested gas gaps. The gas recirculated fraction has been 50% until 28/9/03 when it was brought up to 95%  The recirculation permitted to enhance the gas flow rate up to 1 change/0.5 hours. High change speed is needed for removing the impurities and to distribute the humidity (time constant of few hours)  Two metallic filters and one molecular sieve remove the impurities from the gas before recirculating it.  Chemical analysis of the recirculated gas didn't show any excess of “anomalous" components with respect to the open flow operation until the filters are not exhausted.  HUMIDIFICATION  Since last January all the gas volumes are operated with average 30% RH gas mixture to test the effect on the long term stability of the bakelite resistivity.  Since no negative effects were detected in the previous test, from the beginning of october the RH in the gas mixture is about 50%  In the same time also the external RH stabilization at 55% has been introduced, as a result: the inversion of the resistivity trend

6. Ageing Status Integrated Charge up to 6 May 2004 [10 Atlas Years = 0.30 C/cm^2 including a safety factor >5] Up to now the average ageing is around 6-7 Atlas Years. All the gas gaps under test show very good detection efficiency even at fully open source.

7. Counting rate Open vs. closed source

8. Sample tracks source open

9. Efficiency plateau at various rates (phi view) Cosmic rays data april 2004 The plateau spread depends on the gas volume resistivity

10. Resistivity measurements We use two methods to measure the resistivity of the bakelite plates during the test: The chambers work in pure Ar in self triggering streamer mode so that the plasma resistance become negligible compared to the electrodes resistance. Above this value, an I-V curve gives the value of the resistivity of the bakelite. Linear increase dominated by bakelite resitivity I-V characteristic in pure Ar

11. The efficiency plateaus with full source and with source off are compared. The shift of the plateau with full source is due to the gap current, which produces a voltage drop across the bakelite plates. From the voltage drop and the current measured we calculate the plates resistivity. This approximation is as good as v gas has a well defined value inside the gas gap: the fluctuations are small with respect to the average value Resistivity measurements (2) No correction After correction for resistivity No source full source  V gas =  V gap - R bak I gap

12. Resistivity evolution vs RH

13. Systematic effect in resistivity measurement Ar vs. Plateau We hypotize an inhomogeneous effect of the humidification and a systematic effect due to the sampling area of the trigger 65 43 21 Gas umidificato Umidificatore Gradiente temperatura Humidification

14. Noise current history The noise is due to the inner surface pollution and permanent damaging due to the impurities from the gas degradation (in particular HF) The pink curve (open flow) was fully recovered enhancing the flow. The current increase is much amplified by the temperature and by insufficient gas flow The high RH does not have direct effect on the noise In the last part only the closed loop chambers are affected Closed loop lock-up Filter exhausted Wrong mixture

15. Last Trends Working current Ohmic current

16. What are we learning on ageing? Two main ageing effects are under study: the increase of the electrode plate resistivity which reduces the rate capability and the increase of the noise The gas high flow rate together with the proper RH helps to solve both problems: This high flow rate is practically reached thanks to the closed loop gas system. The two options are safe and effective only together The results clearly indicate how RPCs have to be handled to survive a very long working time in hostile environment: temperature < 25°C RH=50% gas flow rate 1 change/hour One drawback is that most of the system criticality is moved on the gas system: recirculation mechanism, gas purifiers and humidification control. On the long time scale the recirculated chambers accumulated most of the shocks A problem in one of these systems can lead to very dangerous situations so a very tight and redundant control is needed by the DCS

17. Block of the recirculation gas rack

18. “Ohmic” current increase 25/04/04 about 21:00 flux stopped ABS factor 1 HV=9600 each 8 hours HV=7000 for 1 hour Chamber stopped after 3 days

19. Further healing Gas system restarted V-A characteristic measured after 6 hours of flow Pure Ar open loop at 8-10 l/h per gap HV=2000 V for 3 days -> currents about 5 A cooling down The steps represents the source switch off time The discontinuity happened after an Ar complete scanning Last enhancement: Ar+5% i-C4H10 improves the F- cleaning

20. F- measurement in the exhausted gas out Recirculation out F- readout Gas rack Target 50%H2O+ 50%TISAB

21. F- measured in the output gas We put in evidence the effect of the chamber turned on with Argon 1.3  moles/20ml/10s HV=2000 I=2A 5.9  moles/20ml/10s HV=2000 I=35A This technique is applied after the experience made on small samples

22. The all history The first plot is made with standard mixture and shows an initial very high rate and a deceleration. The rate is stable afterwards (with Ar) and strongly depends on the current The rate decreases very slowly (reservoir unlimited) The cleaning mechanism is still under investigation with various hypothesis: UV effect, mechanical effect of the argon plasma, electrochemical effect due to the conduction…

23. Plateau drift effect  The comparison of the plateau curves relative to the same readout panel in different tests reveals a drift of the order of ± 100V  This does not affect the resistivity calculation  Gas stability problem? HV CAEN drift?  This effect could be correlated to the temperature.  In general it is difficult to control the absolute plateau stability over long times.

24. Drift effect on the 6 gas volumes The effect is not homogeneous over all the gas gaps but it is qualitatively similar.

25. Conclusions We are approaching 2 years of continuous ageing (with some technical stops) In such a time it was possible to collect a statistical sample of errors unwanted effects and in general what-was-not-foreseen cases that are precious to estimate the system criticality and its weak points We had 3 units under test but in ATLAS we have 1000 with a certain spread in the initial quality and environmental conditions. On the other side: the environment is much less critical than the GIF we learned how to control the main ageing effects foreseen Now what remains: to enhance the safety margin reducing the unwanted error probability by implementing a tight and smart DCS