Efficiency and timing performance of time-of-flight detector utilizing thin foils and crossed static electric and magnetic fields for mass measurements with Rare-RI Ring facility

摘要

We developed a time-of-flight (TOF) detector for mass measurements of rare radioactive isotopes (RIs) with a storage ring, called the Rare-RI Ring, in RIKEN. For successful mass measurements, a time resolution of less than 100 ps and a detection efficiency close to 100% are required. Additionally, the change of ion velocity in the detector should be as small as possible (<10~(-4)). To satisfy these requirements, the TOF detector utilizes ion-induced secondary electrons emitted from a thin foil and the crossed static electric and magnetic fields to transport the electrons isochronously to the microchannel plate detectors. The TOF detector was tested in both offline test with an alpha source and online test with heavy ions. In the online test with ~(84)Kr ions of 200 MeVucleon, a time resolution of 38.6(2) ps in sigma and a position-averaged detection efficiency of 95.2(2)% were achieved in the entire area of 45-mm-diameter aluminum-coated Mylar foil. This good performance is attributed to the electromagnetic field achieved, which is the strongest thus far for a detector with this design.