TORCH: a novel time-of-flight detector concept

A time-of-flight detector concept is described, named TORCH, that has been developed as a possible solution to the identification of low momentum hadrons in the proposed upgrade of the LHCb spectrometer. The detector consists of a quartz plate placed perpendicular to the beam axis, with photon detectors arranged around the periphery of the plate (outside the acceptance of the spectrometer). Cherenkov light produced by a charged particle traversing the plate is trapped within it by total internal reflection, and then focused onto the photodetectors. A combination of the precise measurement of the arrival time of the photons, and their position, should allow the time-of-flight of the particle to be reconstructed with a precision of ~10 ps, sufficient to satisfy the physics requirements. The R&D that would be necessary to realize this concept is outlined.