BESIII barrel time-of-flight （TOF） calibration using cosmic ray data

The principle of the method for the BESIII TOF calibration using cosmic ray data without magnetic field are reported in this paper. After applying calibration constants, the single-end readout time resolution could reach about 150 ps, and the time resolution for one layer is achieved to be about 110 ps. The paper also described the extraction scheme for the event start time of cosmic events.     

Time calibration for the end cap TOF system of BESⅢ

The time calibration for end cap TOF system of BESⅢ is studied in this paper. It has achieved about 110 ps time resolution for muons in dimu events. The pulse height correction using electronic scan curve and the predicted time calculated using Kalman filter method are introduced. This paper also describes the study of using electrons and muons as calibration samples.     

A cosmic ray test platform based on high time resolution MRPC technology

In order to test the performance of detector prototypes in a laboratory environment, we design and build a large area (90 cm×52 cm) test platform for cosmic rays based on a well-designed Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) with excellent time resolution and a high detection efficiency for minimum ionizing particles. The time resolution of the MRPC module used is tested to be ～80 ps, and the position resolution along the strip is ～5 mm, while the position resolution perpendicular to the strip is ～12.7 mm. The platform constructed by four MRPC modules can be used for tracking cosmic rays with a spatial resolution of ～6.3 mm, and provide a reference time ～40 ps.     

Studies of timing properties for a TOF counter at an external target facility

Timing and amplitude properties of a prototype scintillator TOF counter at an external target facility are studied with a cosmic rays test. The dependence of signal pulse height and time resolution on the coordinate along the scintillator TOF counter is investigated with two different discriminators. A time resolution of 165 ps can be achieved at the center of the counter with a constant fraction discriminator. Time resolution better than 150 ps is obtained at the center with a leading edge discriminator after time wall（ correction is applied for off-line analysis.     

Fast calibration methods using cosmic rays for a neutron detection array

An overall irradiation and calibration technique was introduced and applied to a test scintillation detector array. An integral conversion method was used to reduce the nonlinearity of the time difference spectrum, and to improve the position determination especially for positions close to the two ends of a long scintillation bar. An overall position resolution of about 3.0 cm (FWHM) was extracted from the residual analysis method and verified by a direct measurement. Energy calibration was also realized by selecting cosmic rays at different incident angles. The bulk light attenuation lengths for the four test bars were also determined. It is demonstrated that these methods are especially efficient for calibrating large and complex detector arrays.     

Development of a sub-millimeter position-sensitive gas detector

Position-sensitive thin-gap gas detectors have been developed in the laboratory, based on the ATLAS Thin Gap Chamber. The signal collection structure has been redesigned while retaining other configurations to keep the good time performance of the detector. The position resolution was measured using cosmic muons for two versions of the detector and found to be 409 μm and 233 μm respectively. This paper presents the structure of these two detector prototypes, with the position resolution measurement method and results.     

Prototype of time digitizing system for BESⅢ endcap TOF upgrade

The prototype of a time digitizing system for the BESⅢ endcap TOF (ETOF) upgrade is introduced in this paper. The ETOF readout electronics has a distributed architecture. Hit signals from the multi-gap resistive plate chamber (MRPC) are signaled as LVDS by front-end electronics (FEE) and are then sent to the back-end time digitizing system via long shield differential twisted pair cables. The ETOF digitizing system consists of two VME crates, each of which contains modules for time digitization, clock, trigger, fast control, etc. The time digitizing module (TDIG) of this prototype can support up to 72 electrical channels for hit information measurement. The fast control (FCTL) module can operate in barrel or endcap mode. The barrel FCTL fans out fast control signals from the trigger system to the endcap FCTLs, merges data from the endcaps and then transfers to the trigger system. Without modifying the barrel TOF (BTOF) structure, this time digitizing architecture benefits from improved ETOF performance without degrading the BTOF performance. Lab experiments show that the time resolution of this digitizing system can be lower than 20 ps, and the data throughput to the DAQ can be about 92 Mbps. Beam experiments show that the total time resolution can be lower than 45 ps.     

Calibration of pulse transit time through a cable for EAS experiments

In ground-based extensive air shower experiments, the direction and energy are reconstructed by measuring the relative arrival time of secondary particles, and the energy they deposit. The measurement precision of the arrival time is crucial for determination of the angular resolution. For this purpose, we need to obtain a precise relative time offset for each detector and to apply the calibration process. The time offset is associated with the photomultiplier tube, cable, relevant electronic circuits, etc. In view of the transit time through long cables being heavily dependent on the ambient temperature, a real-time calibration method for the cable transit time is investigated in this paper. Even with a poor-resolution time-to-digital converter, this method can achieve high precision. This has been successfully demonstrated with the Front-End-Electronic board used in the Daya Bay neutrino experiment.     

Characteristics of the sampling paddle modules of neutron wall from the cosmic ray test

In the construction of a large area neutron detector （neutron wall） that is used to detect neutrons at GeV energies, the performances of all the sampling paddle modules prepared for the neutron wall are investigated with a specially designed test bench. Tested by cosmic rays, an average intrinsic time resolution of 222.5 ps is achieved at the center of the modules. The light attenuation length and the effective speed of the light in the module are also investigated.     

Evaluation of a front-end ASIC for the readout of PMTs over a large dynamic range

The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory(LHAASO) project has been proposed for the survey and study of cosmic rays.In the LHAASO project,the Water Cherenkov Detector Array(WCDA) is one of the major detectors for searching for gamma ray sources.A Charge-to-Time Convertor(QTC) ASIC(Application Specification Integrated Circuit),fabricated with Global Foundry 0.35 μm CMOS technology,has been developed for readout of photomultiplier tubes(PMTs) in the WCDA.This ASIC provides both time and charge measurement of PMT signals.The input charge is converted to a pulse width based on the Time-Over-Threshold(TOT) technique and linear discharge method;as for time measurement,leading edge discrimination is employed.This paper focuses on the evaluation of this front-end readout ASIC performance.Test results indicate that the time resolution is better than 400 ps and the charge resolution is better than 1%with large input signals and remains better than 15%@1photoelectron(P.E.),both beyond the application requirement.Moreover,this ASIC has a weak ambient temperature dependence,low input rate dependence and high channel-to-channel isolation.     

Updated study on multi-TeV cosmic-ray modulation with the Tibet Ⅲ air shower array using the east-west method

We study the sidereal and solar time modulation of multi-TeV cosmic rays using the east-west method with Tibet Ⅲ air shower array data taken from November 1999 to December 2008. The statistics are twice the amount used in our previous paper. In this analysis, the amplitude of the observed sidereal time modulation is about 0.1%, and the modulation shows an excess from about 4 to 7 hours and a deficit around 12 hours in local sidereal time. The sidereal time modulation has a weak dependence on the primary energy of the cosmic rays. However, the solar time modulation shows a large energy dependence. We find that the solar time modulation is fairly consistent with the prediction of the Compton-Getting effect for high-energy samples (6.2 TeV and 12.0 TeV), but exceeds the prediction for the low-energy sample (4.0 TeV). Such a discrepancy may be due to the solar modulation or the characteristics of the experimental device in the near threshold energy.     

Cosmic ray test for a T0 detector

The endcap of time-of-flight (ETOF) detector in BES (Beijing Spectrometer) III is planned to be upgraded by using multi-gap resistive plate chambers (MRPCs) and the designed time resolution of the MRPCs is around 50 ps. Thus a time-zero (T0) detector needs to be built to offer a high quality reference time for the MRPCs beam test. So a T0 detector is built using plastic scintillator tiles (BC420) to couple with four fast phototubes (PMTs, Hamamatsu H6533). The timing properties of the detector is studied by using a cosmic ray test and factors related to the time resolution, such as plastic scintillator size, readout mode and angle effects, are discussed. T0 detector timing resolutions of ～41-62 ps are achieved, which means that the T0 detector can be used in the MRPC beam test.     

Design and test of a Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chamber with Long readout-strip （LMRPC）

A new kind （two end readout） of Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chamber with long readout-strip （LMRPC） is developed to be used at the large-area Muon Telescope Detector （MTD） at mid-rapidity at RHIC/STAR experiment for Time-of-Flight （TOF） measurement. The LMRPC has an active area of 87 cm× 17 cm, 10 gas gaps of 250 μm arranged in 2 stacks, with readout strips of 2.5 cm wide and 90 cm long. The considerations in LMRPC design related to its performance are discussed in this paper. The cosmic ray test results of a prototype LMRPC show a detection efficiency 〉95% and the time resolution -70 ps.     

Methods of calibration to optical trapping force upon non-spherical cells

The dynamical equation of a trapping cell is solved to find calibration methods for the trapping force, and two methods are compared by synthetic experiment data. Results indicate that: Boltzmann distribution method (BDM) is available for the force calibration of non-spherical or anisotropic cells in arbitrary trap potential; the mean square displacement method (MSDM) is available only for a symmetric harmonic optical trap. The spatial resolution requirement of the calibration system is about a nanometer. The results agree with the reported experiments.     

Calibration study of the X-T relation for the BESⅢ drift chamber

Offline calibration plays an important role in BES offline data processing. In order to achieve good spatial and momentum resolution, it is necessary to implement high precision offline calibration for the BES drift chamber. This paper studies the time-to-distance relations, which are important calibration constants for track reconstruction. The parameterization of the time-to-distance relation, studies of left-right asymmetry and studies of variation with entrance angle are performed. The impact of dead channels on the time-to-distance relation is given special attention in order to reduce the shift in measured momentum for tracks passing near dead cells. Finally we present the resolutions for barrel Bhabha events(|cos θ|< 0.8) from a J/ψ data set taken in 2012. The average spatial resolution is 123 μm and the momentum resolution for 1.548 Ge V/c Bhabha tracks is 11.9 Me V/c.     

Studies of a scintillator-bar detector for a neutron wall at an external target facility

To achieve a better time resolution of a scintillator-bar detector for a neutron wall at the external target facility of HIRFL-CSR, we have carried out a detailed study of the photomultiplier, the wrapping material and the coupling media. The timing properties of a scintillator-bar detector have been studied in detail with cosmic rays using a high and low level signal coincidence. A time resolution of 80~ps has been achieved in the center of the scintillator-bar detector.     

Simulation of time bunching for a pulsed positron beam

Simulate anneal arithmetic has been used to settle the problem of time bunching on a pulsed slow-positron beam device. This paper has searched for the parameters of the device in a large scope and achieved the time resolution within 150ps at the target with accelerating voltage in a range of 0.5-30kV.     

Investigation of the time performance of a LYSO array for TOF-PET

Positron Emission Tomography(PET) using time-of-flight information,which can greatly improve the quality of the reconstructed image,has recently become an exciting topic.In this work,3.2 mmx3.2 mmx25 mm finger-like LYSO crystals were used to make a 5x5 array,coupled to the Hamamatsu H8500 photomultiplier tube(PMT) as a detector.A fast leading-edge discriminator was designed for the LYSO-H8500 detector.Average coincidence time resolution FWHM of 330 ps was obtained for the LYSO detector with a reference BaF_2 detector,whose time resolution for 511 keV γ-rays was FWHM 150 ps.Time resolution FWHM of 294 ps was calculated for the LYSO detector,and coincidence time resolution of FHWM 415 ps can be expected for two identical LYSO detectors.     

Calibration of RPC-based muon detector at BESⅢ

The calibration algorithm for RPC-based muon detector at BESⅢ has been developed. The calibration method, calibration error and algorithm performance are studied. The primary results of efficiency and noise at layer, module and strip levels have been calibrated with cosmic ray data. The calibration constants are available for simulation and reconstruction tuning. The results of Monte Carlo and data are also compared to check the validation and reliability of the algorithm.     

Calibration of RPC-based muon detector at BESⅢ

The calibration algorithm for RPC-based muon detector at BESIII has been developed. The calibration method, calibration error and algorithm performance are studied. The primary results of efficiency and noise at layer, module and strip levels have been calibrated with cosmic ray data. The calibration constants are available for simulation and reconstruction tuning. The results of Monte Carlo and data are also compared to check the validation and reliability of the algorithm.