Status of technology of MRPC time of flight system

TL;DR

This paper reviews the evolution of MRPC-based time of flight systems, highlighting advancements in time resolution, rate capability, and electronics across three generations for particle identification in high-energy physics experiments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the technological development and key innovations in MRPC TOF systems across three generations.

Findings

First generation MRPC TOF has ~80ps resolution at low rates.

Second generation achieves higher rate capability up to 30kHz/cm2.

Third generation aims for 20ps resolution at 20kHz/cm2 with advanced electronics.

Abstract

Time of flight system (TOF) based on MRPC technology is widely used in modern physics experiments, and it also plays an important role in particle identification. With the increase of accelerator energy and luminosity, TOF system is required to indentify definite particles precisely under high rate environment. The MRPC technology TOF system can be defined as three generations. The first generation TOF is based on float glass MRPC and its time resolution is around 80ps, but the rate is relatively low (typically lower than 100Hz/cm2). The typical systems are TOF of RHIC-STAR, LHC-ALICE and BES III endcap. For the second generation TOF, its time resolution is in the same order with the first generation, but the rate capability is much higher. Its rate capability can reach 30kHz/cm2. The typical experiment with this high rate TOF is FAIR-CBM. The biggest challenge is on the third generation TOF. For example, the momentum upper limit of K/PI separation is around 7GeV/c for JLab-SoLID TOF system under high particle rate as high as 20kHz/cm2, the time requirement is around 20ps. The readout electronics of first two generations is based on time over threshold method and pulse shape sampling technology will be used in the third generation TOF. In the same time, the machine learning technology is also designed to analysis the time performance. In this paper, we will describe the evolution of MRPC TOF technology and key technology of each generation TOF.