TORCH—a Cherenkov based time-of-flight detector

TORCH is an innovative high-precision time-of-flight system to provide particle identification in the difficult intermediate momentum region up to 10 GeV/c. It is also suitable for large-area applications. The detector provides a time-of-flight measurement from the imaging of Cherenkov photons emitted in a 1 cm thick quartz radiator. The photons propagate by total internal reflection to the edge of the quartz plate and are then focused onto an array of photon detectors at the periphery. A time-of-flight resolution of about 10-15 ps per incident charged particle needs to be achieved to allow a three sigma kaon-pion separation up to 10 GeV/c momentum for the TORCH located 9.5 m from the interaction point. Given ~30 detected photons per incident charged particle, this requires measuring the time-of-arrival of individual photons to about 70 ps. This paper will describe the design of a TORCH prototype involving a number of ground-breaking and challenging techniques

Quenching the scintillation in CF4 Cherenkov gas radiator

CF4 is used as a Cherenkov gas radiator in one of the Ring Imaging Cherenkov detectors at the LHCb experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. CF4 is well known to have a high scintillation photon yield in the near and far VUV, UV and in the visible wavelength range. A large flux of scintillation photons in our photon detection acceptance between 200 and 800 nm could compromise the particle identification efficiency. We will show that this scintillation photon emission system can be effectively quenched, consistent with radiationless transitions, with no significant impact on the photons resulting from Cherenkov radiation