2018/12/23 by N. Harnew, S. Bhasin, Harnew, Neville +34
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Radiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1812.09773
openalex publication_date 2018/12/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
TORCH is a time-of-flight detector, designed to provide charged pi/K particle identification up to a momentum of 10 GeV/c for a 10 m flight path. To achieve this level of performance, a time resolution of 15 ps per incident particle is required. TORCH uses a plane of quartz of 1 cm thickness as a source of Cherenkov photons, which are then focussed onto square Micro-Channel Plate Photomultipliers (MCP-PMTs) of active area 53 x 53 mm2, segmented into 8 x 128 pixels equivalent. A small-scale TORCH demonstrator with a customised MCP-PMT and associated readout electronics has been successfully operated in a 5 GeV/c mixed pion/proton beam at the CERN PS facility. Preliminary results indicate that a single-photon resolution better than 100 ps can be achieved. The expected performance of a full-scale TORCH detector for the Upgrade II of the LHCb experiment is also discussed.