Speaker
Neville Harnew
(Univ. of Oxford (UK))
Description
The TORCH (Time Of internally Reflected CHerenkov light) detector is an
innovative high-precision time-of-flight system which is suitable for large
areas, up to tens of square metres, and is being developed for the upgraded
LHCb experiment. The TORCH provides a time-of-flight measurement from the
imaging of photons emitted in a 1 cm thick quartz radiator, based on the
Cherenkov principle. The photons propagate by total internal reflection to the
edge of the quartz plane and are then focused onto an array of Micro-Channel
Plate (MCP) photon detectors at the periphery of the detector.
The goal is to achieve a timing resolution of 15 ps per particle, over a
flight distance of 10 m. This will allow particle identification in the
challenging intermediate momentum region, up to 20 GeV/c. Commercial MCPs
have been tested in the laboratory and demonstrate the required timing
precision. An electronics readout system based on the NINO and HPTDC chipset
is being developed to evaluate an 8x8 channel TORCH prototype in a testbeam.
The expected performance of the TORCH detector at LHCb in full
simulation will also be presented.
Author
Neville Harnew
(Univ. of Oxford (UK))
