Performance confirmation of the Belle II imaging Time Of Propogation (iTOP) prototype counter

The Bell Detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e{sup +}e{sup -} collider performed extremely well, logging an integrated luminosity an order of magnitude higher than the design baseline. With this inverse attobarn of integrated luminosity, time-dependent CP-violation inn the 3rd generation beauty quarks was firmly established, and is now a precision measurement. Going beyond this to explore if the Kobayashi-Maskawa mechanism is the only contributor to quark-mixing, and to interrogate the flavor sector for non-standard model enhancements, requires a detector and accelerator capable of topping this world-record luminosity by more than an order of magnitude. The Belle II detector at the upgraded Super-KEKB accelerator has been designed to meet this highly ambitious goal of operating at a luminosity approaching 10{sup 36} cm{sup -2} s{sup -1}. Such higher event rates and backgrounds require upgrade of essentially all detector subsystems, as well as their readout. Comparing the Belle composite (threshold Aerogel + Time of Flight) particle identification (PID) system with the DIRC employed by BaBar, quartz radiator internal Cherenkov photon detection proved to have higher kaon efficiency and lower pion fake rates. However, because the detector structure and CsI calorimeter will be retained, an improved barrel PID must fit within a very narrowmore » envelope, as indicated in Figure 1. To effectively utilize this space, a more compact detector concept based on the same quartz radiators, but primarily using photon arrival time was proposed. This Time Of Propagation (TOP) counter was studied in a number of earlier prototype tests. Key to the necessary 10's of picosecond single-photon timing has been the development of the so-called SL-10 Micro-Channel Plate Photo-Multiplier Tube (MCP-PMT), which has demonstrated sub-40 ps single photon Transit Time Spread TTS. Further simulation study of this detector concept indicated that a focusing mirror in the forward direction, as well as a modest image expansion volume and more highly pixelated image plane improve the theoretical detector performance, since timing alone is limited by chromatic dispersion of the Cherenkov photons. This imaging-TOP (or iTOP) counter is the basis of Belle II barrel PID upgrade. However, a number of critical performance parameters must be demonstrated prior to releasing this prototype design for production manufacture.« less