Performance of a prototype TORCH time-of-flight detector
Abstract
TORCH is a novel time-of-flight detector, designed to provide charged particle identification of pions, kaons and protons in the momentum range 2-20 GeV/c over a 9.5 m flight path. A detector module, comprising a 10mm thick quartz plate, provides a source of Cherenkov photons which propagate via total internal reflection to one end of the plate. Here, the photons are focused onto an array of custom-designed Micro-Channel Plate Photo-Multiplier Tubes (MCP-PMTs) which measure their positions and arrival times. The target time resolution per photon is 70 ps which, for 30 detected photons per charged particle, results in a 10-15 ps time-of-flight resolution. A 1.25 m length TORCH prototype module employing two MCP-PMTs has been developed, and tested at the CERN PS using a charged hadron beam of 8 GeV/c momentum. The construction of the module, the properties of the MCP-PMTs and the readout electronics are described. Measurements of the collected photon yields and single-photon time resolutions have been performed as a function of particle entry points on the plate and compared to expectations. These studies show that the performance of the TORCH prototype approaches the design goals for the full-scale detector.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2209.13379,
title = {Performance of a prototype TORCH time-of-flight detector},
author = {Srishti Bhasin and Thomas Blake and Nicholas Brook and Maria Flavia Cicala and Thomas Conneely and David Cussans and Maarten van Dijk and Roger Forty and Christoph Frei and Emmy Gabriel and Rui Gao and Timothy Gershon and Thierry Gys and Tom Hadavizadeh and Thomas Hancock and Thomas Jones and Neville Harnew and Michal Kreps and James Milnes and Didier Piedigrossi and Jonas Rademacker and Jennifer Clare Smallwood},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.13379},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
18 pages, 16 figures, to be published in Nucl. Instrum. Methods A. During review, clarity added to description throughout; updated figures 15 and 16; revised argument in section 6.3