Performance studies of Time-of-Flight detectors at LHC

TL;DR

This study evaluates the performance of Time-of-Flight detectors in forward proton detection at LHC, focusing on pile-up suppression and proposing new observables for better signal separation in high pile-up conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a toy model analysis of ToF detector performance, assessing pile-up mitigation and proposing a novel observable for improved signal discrimination.

Findings

ToF timing resolution significantly affects pile-up suppression efficiency.

The proposed observable shows potential for effective central diffractive signal separation.

Performance depends on the number of pile-up interactions and detector resolution.

Abstract

We present results of a toy model study of performance of the Time-of-Flight detectors integrated into forward proton detectors. The goal of the ToF device is to suppress effects of additional soft processes (so called pile-up) accompanying the hard-scale central diffractive event, characterized by two tagged leading protons, one on each side from the interaction point. The method of mitigation of the pile-up effects exemplified in this study is based on measuring a difference between arrival times of these leading protons at the forward proton detectors and hence estimate the z-coordinate of the production vertex. We evaluate effects of the the pile-up background by studying in detail its components, and estimate the performance of the ToF method as a function of the time and spatial resolution of the ToF device and of the number of pile-up interactions per bunch crossing. We also propose a new observable with a potential to efficiently separate central diffractive signal from the harsh pile-up environment.