Pico TOF: A Time-of-Flight Data Acquisition System for Ultra-Fast Particle Detectors

70460S02-II This project will develop a Time-of-Flight (TOF) detector to significantly extend the reach of the Solenoidal Tracker the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (STAR). In particular, the percentage of kaons and protons that could be identified would be doubled to more than 95% of all those produced in central Au+Au collisions. Combined with existing STAR detectors, the additional capability provided by the TOF detector would allow STAR to extract the maximum amount of information available. TOF particle identification will require low jitter amplification of 50 x 10-15 C charge pulses and 100ps aggregate start-stop timing resolution, with no more than 50ps timing resolution from the electronics chain. Phase I designed, built, and demonstrated a second generation, 24-channel, amplifier/discriminator circuit and a time-to-digital (TDC) circuit. Tested together, these circuits demonstrated sub-50ps start-stop resolution performance. Phase II will scale up the TDC circuit to 24 channels. The analog and TDC circuits will be combined with data communications circuits for interface with STAR. The detectors and electronics will be integrated at the multiple-tray level, and the resulting 192-channel modules will be tested both with cosmic rays and at STAR. Further, TDC electronics will be adapted for stand-alone operation. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by awardee: TDC circuits are commonly used in some types time-of-flight mass spectrometers that are becoming basic research and production tools for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Also, TDCs, in combination with lasers, have potential large-scale application in atmospheric sensing, terrain mapping, and three-dimensional structural imaging.