The focusing DIRC: An innovative PID detector Borsato, M.; Arnaud, N.; Dey, B. ...
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment,
12/2013, Volume:
732
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Peer reviewed
The FDIRC (Focusing Detector of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) is a new concept of PID (Particle IDentification) detector aimed at separating kaons from pions up to a few GeV/c. It is the ...successor of the BABAR DIRC and benefits from the knowledge accumulated with a first FDIRC prototype built and operated at SLAC. The FDIRC is intended to be used in an environment with a luminosity 100 times higher than for BABAR and Belle. Backgrounds will be higher as well; yet, the FDIRC has been designed to perform at least as well as the BABAR DIRC. The main improvement is a complete redesign of the photon camera, moving from a huge tank of ultra-pure water to much smaller focusing cameras with solid fused-silica optics. Furthermore, the detection chain will be 10 times faster than in BABAR to reject more background and to measure more accurately Cherenkov angles. This is achieved using H-8500 MaPMTs and a new front-end electronics (FEE) with significantly improved timing precision, higher hit rate capability, and small dead time. A full-scale FDIRC prototype covering 1/12th of the barrel azimuth is installed at SLAC and has just started recording cosmic-ray data. In this paper, we summarize the FDIRC design, present the status of the prototype test at SLAC and review the ongoing work to analyse the data.
Progress on development of the new FDIRC PID detector Va'vra, J.; Arnaud, N.; Barnyakov, A.Yu ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
08/2013, Volume:
718
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We present a progress status of a new concept of PID detector called FDIRC, intended to be used at the SuperB experiment, which requires π/K separation up to a few GeV/c. The new photon camera is ...made of the solid fused-silica optics with a volume 25× smaller and speed increased by a factor of 10 compared to the BaBar DIRC, and therefore will be much less sensitive to electromagnetic and neutron background.
Study of H-8500 MaPMT for the FDIRC detector at SuperB Gargano, F.; Arnaud, N.; Barnyakov, A.Yu ...
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment,
08/2013, Volume:
718
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Peer reviewed
An overview of ongoing studies on the Hamamatsu H-8500 Multi-Anode Photomultiplier (MaPMT) is presented. This device will be used for the FDIRC Particle Identification Detector (PID) of the SuperB ...experiment. The H-8500 MaPMT has been chosen for its excellent single photon timing capabilities and its highly pixilated design. Results on timing studies, gain uniformity, single photoelectron detection efficiency uniformity and cross-talk are presented.
Design and performance of the focusing DIRC detector Dey, B.; Borsato, M.; Arnaud, N. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
03/2015, Volume:
775, Issue:
C
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We present the final results from a novel Cherenkov imaging detector called the Focusing DIRC (FDIRC). This detector was designed as a full-scale prototype of the particle identification system for ...the SuperB experiment 1, and comprises 1/12 of the SuperB barrel azimuthal coverage, with partial photodetector and electronics implementation. The prototype was tested in the SLAC Cosmic Ray Telescope which provided 3D tracking of cosmic muons with an angular resolution of ~1.5mrad, a position resolution of 4–5mm, a start time resolution of 70ps, and muon tracks above ~2GeV tagged using an iron range stack. The fused silica focusing photon camera was coupled to a full-size BaBar DIRC bar box and was read out, over part of the full coverage, by 12 Hamamatsu H8500 multi-anode photomultipliers (MaPMTs) providing 768 pixels. We used waveform digitizing electronics to read out the MaPMTs. We give a detailed description of our data analysis methods and point out limitations on the present performance. We present results that demonstrate some basic performance characteristics of this design, including (a) single photon Cherenkov angle resolutions with and without chromatic corrections, (b) signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio between the Cherenkov peak and background, which primarily consists of ambiguities of the possible photon paths from emission along the track to a given pixel, (c) dTOP=TOPmeasured – TOPexpected resolutions (with TOP being the photon Time-of-Propagation in fused silica), and (d) performance of the detector in the presence of high-rate backgrounds.
The focusing DIRC with waveform digitizing electronics Ruckman, L.L.; Nishimura, K.; Varner, G.S. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
11/2010, Volume:
623, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We have tested a novel Cherenkov imaging detector called the Focusing DIRC (FDIRC) with waveform digitizing electronics. The prototype's concept is based on the BaBar DIRC with several important ...improvements: (a) much faster, pixelated photon detectors, (b) a mirror that makes the photon detector smaller and less sensitive to background in future applications, and (c) electronics capable of measuring single photon resolution to σ≈150ps, which allows for correction due to chromatic error. In this test, the prototype has been instrumented with seven Hamamatsu H-8500 MaPMTs. Waveforms from ∼450 pixels are digitized with waveform sampling electronics based on the BLAB2 ASIC, operating at a sampling speed of ∼2.5GSa/s. This version of the FDIRC prototype was tested in a large cosmic ray telescope providing muon tracks with ∼1mrad angular resolution and a muon momentum cutoff of ≥1.6GeV/c.
The DIRC-like time-of-flight detector (FTOF) is a ring imaging Cherenkov counter designed to improve the charged particle identification on the forward side of SuperB. Here we review the main ...characteristics of this device, summarize the results of a prototype test done last year in the SLAC Cosmic Ray Telescope and present the future steps needed to build the FTOF.
An overview of the electronics chains for the two charged particle identification (PID) detectors of the SuperB experiment is presented. The PID group is designing different detectors for the barrel ...(FDIRC) and forward (FTOF) regions. Both are based on time measurements, respectively in the 100ps and 10psrms resolution domains.
Results from the FDIRC prototype Roberts, D.A.; Arnaud, N.; Dey, B. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
12/2014, Volume:
766
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We present results from a novel Cherenkov imaging detector called the Focusing DIRC (FDIRC). This detector was designed as a prototype of the particle identification system for the SuperB experiment, ...and comprises 1/12 of the SuperB barrel azimuthal coverage with partial electronics implementation. The prototype was tested in the SLAC Cosmic Ray Telescope (CRT) which provides 3-D muon tracking with an angular resolution of ~1.5 mrad, track position resolution of 5-6 mm, start time resolution of 70 ps, and a muon low-energy cutoff of ~2 GeV provided by an iron range stack. The quartz focusing photon camera couples to a full-size BaBar DIRC bar box and is read out by 12 Hamamatsu H8500 MaPMTs providing 768 pixels. We used IRS2 waveform digitizing electronics to read out the MaPMTs. We present several results from our on-going development activities that demonstrate that the new optics design works very well, including: (a) single photon Cherenkov angle resolutions with and without chromatic corrections, (b) S/N ratio between the Cherenkov peak and background, which consists primarily of ambiguities in possible photon paths to a given pixel, (c) dTOP=TOP sub(measured)-TOP sub(expected) resolutions, and (d) performance of the detector in the presence of high-rate backgrounds. We also describe data analysis methods and point out limits of the present performance.
Using two identical 64-pixel Burle/Photonis MCP-PMTs (micro-channel plate PMT) to provide start and stop signals, we have achieved a timing resolution of
σ
Single_detector∼7.2
ps for
N
pe∼100 ...photoelectrons (
N
pe) with a laser diode providing a 1
mm spot on the MCP window. The limiting resolution achieved was
σ
Single_detector∼5.0
ps for
N
pe∼250, for which we estimate the MCP-PMT contribution of
σ
MCP−PMT∼4.5
ps. The electronics contribution is estimated as
σ
Electronics=3.42
ps. These results suggest that an ultra-high-resolution TOF detector may become a reality at future experiments one day.
Beam test of a Time-of-Flight detector prototype Va’vra, J.; Leith, D.W.G.S.; Ratcliff, B. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
07/2009, Volume:
606, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We report on results of a Time-of-Flight (TOF) counter prototype in beam tests at SLAC and Fermilab. Using two identical 64-pixel Photonis Microchannel Plate Photomultipliers (MCP-PMTs) to provide ...start and stop signals, each having a 1-cm-long quartz Cherenkov radiator, we have achieved a timing resolution of σSingle_detector∼14ps.