The non-gated charge-to-time converter for TOF detector in BES III

The TOF (Time-Of-Flight) detector in BES (Beijing Spectrometer) III experiment requires a total time resolution of better than 90 ps (for the barrel part) and 110 ps (for the endcap part). With the requirement of such a high precision time measurement, it is essential to measure the amplitude or charge of the PMT (photomultiplier tube) signals, in order to correct the amplitude dependent time-walk. A method of using non-gated QTC (Charge-to-Time Converter) to measure the input signal charge was developed for BES III TOF readout electronics. The non-gated QTC with differential inputs was designed to measure the input charge covering a dynamic range of about 30–927 pC. Test results showed that the rms resolution is better than 10 bit and the relative error is less than 0.5% after quadratic fitting. The designed converter is simple, stable and suitable for multi-channel systems. A total of 448 channels of QTCs have been developed for BES III TOF readout electronics, which help the TOF system achieve the expected time resolution after the time-walk correction.