Comparative Test Beam Studies of Precision Timing Calorimeter Technologies

Abstract

Current and future high energy physics particle colliders are capable to provide instantaneous luminosities of 10^(34) cm^(-2) s^(-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 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 measurements utilizing Lutetiumyttrium 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 semi-conductor based detectors. We discuss possible implementations based on these different technologies in a large scale particle physics detector for the high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC).