A high resolution resistive plate chamber tracking system developed for cosmic ray muon tomography

This work describes the performance of a muon tracker built with high resolution glass resistive plate chambers. The tracker is the result of a collaboration between University of Bristol and the Atomic Weapon Establishment to develop a reliable and cost effective system to scan shipping containers in search of special nuclear materials. The current setup consists of 12 detection layers, each comprised of a resistive plate chamber read out by 1.5 mm pitch strips. For most of the layers we achieved an efficiency better than 95%, a purity above 95% and a signal-to-noise ratio better than 300. A spatial resolution better than 500μm was obtained for most layers, thus satisfying the main requirements to apply resistive plate chambers to cosmic ray tomography.