Forward Multiplicity TOF Spectra and Timing Resolution Simulations for FMD-MCP

We present here model simulation studies of two factors relevant to the high timing resolution expected from the FMD-MCP at ALICE: (i) the physical TOF spectra of charged particles in Pb-Pb collisions integrated over the whole FMD-MCP disk for central and for minimum bias events and (ii) the performance of the passive summator Abstract: at the output of FMD-MCP, creating an analogous sum of all input signals. Results show that the rise time of the integrated TOF spectrum signal is about or smaller than 100 ps for all disks. This confirms the proposed application of high timing resolution detector. The noiseless passive summation of fast signals coming through N input channels gives the improvement of the timing resolution compared to that of the individual channel by a factor of about àN. Thus both studies point to the feasibility of the proposed applications of a fast detector with high timing performance and of the passive summation idea.