Performance of the LHCb RICH photo-detectors and readout in a system test using charged particles from a 25 ns-structured beam

The LHCb experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) utilises two Ring Imaging CHerenkov (RICH) detectors for particle identification. To verify that the RICH assembly will perform as expected prior to installation, an array of 48 production Hybrid Photon Detectors and their readout have been tested under realistic running conditions in a 25 ns-structured charged particle beam provided by the SPS facility at CERN. This system test is an important milestone in the overall commissioning of the LHCb detector and demonstrates that all aspects meet the stringent physics requirements of the LHCb experiment. © 2009 Elsevier B.V