A novel temperature monitoring sensor for gas-based detectors in large HEP experiments

Gaseous detectors are commonly used in HEP (High Energy Physics) experiments to reconstruct the track of elementary particles. They are often made by a very large number of chambers with relatively small individual volume, arranged in thick layers placed approximately all around the vertex of the experiment in order to detect elementary particles produced in any direction. The large volume of gas inside the detector must be monitored for many parameters as they can affect both the efficiency and the working life of the detector. The temperature of the gas inside the individual chambers is a critical parameter to be monitored, as it can both affect the efficiency of the detector and point out on-board electronic circuitry overheating. In this paper we propose a novel gas temperature sensing system based on optical fibre technology. The adopted technology is well suited to make distributed sensing systems with large number of sensors, it is immune to electromagnetic disturbances and it has adequate radiation hardness. A prototype of the basic sensor of the proposed system was tested at the experimental facility for Resistive Plate Chamber characterization available at the INFN laboratories in Frascati. Results are presented and discussed.