The Design, Implementation and Performance of the PHENIX Time-of-Flight West Detector

Abstract

The topic of this thesis is the design, implementation and performance of the PHENIX Time-of-Flight West (TOFW) subsystem, a high transverse momentum (pT ) particle identification (PID) detector based on Multi-Gap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) technology. The method of time-of-flight PID is presented. The design characteristics of the MRPC, the layout of the detector subsystem, as well as the data acquisition, data production and calibration processes are described. With an intrinsic timing resolution of σ = 70 ps in the TOFW, and in conjunction with an Aerogel Cherenkov detector and Ring Imaging Cherenkov detector, pion, kaon, and proton identification is achieved up to pT = 9 GeV/c.