Timing measurements with a 3D silicon sensor on Timepix3 in a 180 GeV/c hadron beam

TL;DR

This study compares the timing performance of 3D and thin planar silicon sensors on Timepix3 in a 180 GeV/c hadron beam, highlighting their different resolution characteristics and the impact of incident angle.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed comparison of 3D and thin planar sensors' timing resolutions on Timepix3 under high-energy hadron beam conditions.

Findings

3D sensor achieves 567 ps time resolution for perpendicular incidence.

Thin planar sensor achieves 683 ps for perpendicular incidence.

Combined measurements can improve resolution to about 100 ps for large clusters.

Abstract

Test beam measurements have been carried out with a 3D sensor on a Timepix3 ASIC and the time measurements are presented. The measurements are compared to those of a thin planar sensor on Timepix3. It is shown that for a perpendicularly incident beam the time resolution of both detectors is dominated by the Timepix3 front-end. The 3D detector is dominated by the time-to-digital conversion whereas the analog front-end jitter also gives a significant contribution for the thin planar detector. The 3D detector reaches an overall time resolution of 567(6)ps compared to 683(8)ps for the thin planar detector. For a grazing angle beam, however, the thin planar detector achieves a better time resolution because it has a lower pixel capacitance, and therefore suffers less from jitter in the analog front-end for the low charge signals that mainly occur in this type of measurement. Finally, it is also shown that the 3D and thin planar detector can achieve time resolutions for large clusters of about 100ps and 250ps, respectively, by combining many single hit measurements.