Development of precision Time-Of-Flight electronics for LHCb TORCH

The TORCH detector is proposed for the low-momentum particleidentification upgrade of the LHCb experiment. It combinesTime-Of-Flight and Cherenkov techniques to achieve positive π/K/p separation up to 10 GeV/c. This requires a timing resolution of70 ps for single photons. This paper reports on the electronicsdeveloped for such measurements, using commercial Micro ChannelPlate (MCP) devices and custom ASICs (NINO and HPTDC). The intrinsictiming resolution of the electronics measured with electrical testpulses is 40 ps. With the MCP photon detector and a pulsed laser, aresolution of 90 ps has been recorded in laboratory tests and 130 psin test beams