M.R. Shepherd

The GlueX DIRC project

The GlueX experiment was designed to search for and study the pattern of gluonic excitations in the meson spectrum produced through photoproduction reactions at a new tagged photon beam facility in Hall D at Jefferson Laboratory. The particle identification capabilities of the GlueX experiment will be enhanced by constructing a DIRC (Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) detector, utilizing components of the decommissioned BaBar DIRC. The DIRC will allow systematic studies of kaon final states that are essential for inferring the quark flavor content of both hybrid and conventional mesons. The design for the GlueX DIRC is presented, including the new expansion volumes that are currently under development.

A measurement of the energy and timing resolution of the GlueX Forward Calorimeter using an electron beam

The performance of the GlueX Forward Calorimeter was studied using a small version of the detector and a variable energy electron beam derived from the Hall B tagger at Jefferson Lab. For electron energies from 110 MeV to 260 MeV, which are near the lower-limits of the design sensitivity, the fractional energy resolution was measured to range from 20% to 14%, which meets the design goals. The use of custom 250 MHz flash ADCs for readout allowed precise measurements of signal arrival times. The detector achieved timing resolutions of 0.38 ns for a single 100 mV pulse, which will allow timing discrimination of photon beam bunches and out-of-time background during the operation of the GlueX detector.

Precision timing measurement of phototube pulses using a flash analog-to-digital converter

We present the timing characteristics of the flash ADC readout of the GlueX forward calorimeter, which depends on precise measurement of arrival time of pulses from FEU 84-3 photomultiplier tubes to suppress backgrounds. The tests presented were performed using two different 250 MHz prototype flash ADC devices, one with eight-bit and one with 12-bit sampling depth. All measured time resolutions were better than 1 ns, independent of signal size, which is the design goal for the GlueX forward calorimeter. For pulses with an amplitude of 100 mV the timing resolution is 0.57±0.18 ns, while for 500 mV pulses it is 0.24±0.08 ns.

Construction and Performance of the Barrel Electromagnetic Calorimeter for the GlueX Experiment

Abstract The barrel calorimeter is part of the new spectrometer installed in Hall D at Jefferson Lab for the GlueX experiment. The calorimeter was installed in 2013, commissioned in 2014 and has been operating routinely since early 2015. The detector configuration, associated Monte Carlo simulations, calibration and operational performance are described herein. The calorimeter records the time and energy deposited by charged and neutral particles created by a multi-GeV photon beam. It is constructed as a lead and scintillating-fiber calorimeter and read out with 3840 large-area silicon photomultiplier arrays. Particles impinge on the detector over a wide range of angles, from normal incidence at 90 degrees down to 11.5 degrees, which defines a geometry that is fairly unique among calorimeters. The response of the calorimeter has been measured during a running experiment and performs as expected for electromagnetic showers below 2.5 GeV. We characterize the performance of the BCAL using the energy resolution integrated over typical angular distributions for π 0 and η production of σ E ∕ E = 5 . 2 % ∕ E ( GeV ) ⊕ 3 . 6 % and a timing resolution of σ = 150 xa0ps at 1 xa0GeV.