Studies towards a precision timing calorimeter for high energy physics collider experiments

Abstract

Current and future high energy physics particle colliders are capable to provide instantaneous luminosities of 1034cm−2s−1 and above. The high center of mass energy, the large number of simultaneous collision of beam particles in the experiments and the very high repetition rates of the collision events pose huge challenges. They result in extremely high particle fluxes, causing very high occupancies in the particle physics detectors operating at these machines. To reconstruct the physics events, the detectors have to make as much information as possible available on the final state particles. We briefly discuss how timing information with a precision of around 10 ps and below can aid the reconstruction of the physics events under such challenging conditions. We discuss different detector concepts which can provide time measurements for charged particles and photons with a precision in the range of a few 10 ps. We present in detail updated measurements utilizing a Lutetium-yttrium oxyorthosilicate (LYSO) based calorimeter prototype. With an improved understanding of the signal creation, light propagation and detection characteristics we achieve a precision of down to 30 ps for electrons with energies of 30 GeV. Further we present beam test measurements with a multichannel plate based detectors and studies using silicon detectors. We discuss possible implementations based on these different technologies in a large scale particle physics detector.