Barrel Time-of-Flight (TOF) Detector for the $\bar{\text {P}}$ ANDA Experiment at FAIR

The $\bar{\text{ P }}$ ANDA experiment at FAIR in Darmstadt will perform a fixed target experiment by using a cooled beam of antiprotons in the momentum range between 1.5 to 15 GeV/c to study open questions in hadron physics. The core program comprises charmonium spectroscopy with precision measurement of mass, width and decay branches, investigation of possible exotic states, search for modifications of charmed hadrons in nuclear matter and $\gamma $ -ray spectroscopy of hypernuclei. The barrel TOF counter is located at 50 cm radial distance from the beam axis covering an azimuthal angle from 22.5° to 150°. The detector is designed to achieve a time resolution below 100 ps (sigma) which allows good event separation as well as particle identification below the Chrenkov threshold. With the current prototype a single detector time resolution < 60 ps was achieved.