Development of TORCH readout electronics for customised MCPs

Abstract

The TORCH detector is being developed for low-momentum particle identification, combining time-of-flight and Cherenkov techniques to achieve charged particle pi/K/p separation up to 10 GeV/c over a flight distance of 10m. This requires a timing resolution of 70 ps for single photons. Based on an existing scalable design, production and testing of a TORCH readout system has been undertaken over the past year, and a novel customized Micro Channel Plate (MCP) photomultiplier device with 128-channels has been instrumented. This paper will report on the development of the readout system which is being used to measure time-of-flight in a test-beam, and its performance. We will also discuss the communication and data alignment between the TORCH system and the TimePix3 telescope in order to provide track reconstruction.