Speaker
Description
The Cooler-storage-ring External-target Experiment (CEE) is a heavy-ion spectrometer designed to study the properties of dense nuclear matter in the GeV energy regime. The external Time-of-Flight (eTOF) system is developed to provide particle identification in the forward region and contribute to the trigger of the experiment. A large-area MRPC-based TOF system has been constructed to achieve high efficiency and excellent timing performance.
Multigap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPCs) are widely used in time-of-flight systems due to their excellent time resolution, large-area coverage capability, and low production cost. For the CEE-eTOF system, full-size MRPC modules with double-ended strip readout have been developed and integrated into the eTOF wall. A sealed gas structure is adopted in the detector design, which reduces the required gas flow and simplifies the integration of the detector system.
The performance of the CEE-eTOF system has been studied through cosmic-ray and beam experiments. A complete data analysis procedure, including signal calibration, time correction, position reconstruction, and hit matching, has been established. Cosmic-ray measurements are used to evaluate the detector efficiency, timing performance, and noise characteristics. The detector achieves an efficiency above 95% and a time resolution better than 60 ps, satisfying the requirements of the CEE experiment. In addition, cosmic-ray events are used to determine the relative timing offsets among detector strips, and the calibration results are further validated with beam data through timing consistency studies and alignment analysis.
The performance study demonstrates the capability of the MRPC-based CEE-eTOF system for particle identification and trigger applications in the CEE experiment.
