The PANDA experiment, currently under construction at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion
Research (FAIR) in Darmstadt, Germany, addresses fundamental questions in hadron and nuclear
physics via interactions of antiprotons with nucleus / nuclei. The High Energy Storage Ring will
provide an antiproton beam with a momentum range of 1.5 – 15 GeV/c and an average collision rate
on the fixed target of 20 MHz is envisaged.
The Barrel TOF is realised as a barrel-shaped scintillator tile hodoscope, covering the central region
of the detector, will be one of the key components for the software trigger to reduce the stored data,
to determine the time origin of the tracks, and to provide particle identification for particles even
below the Cherenkov threshold of about 700 MeV/c. To achieve the needed time resolution < 100 ps
plastic scintillator tiles with minimum material budget read out by Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM)
have been selected.
In this presentation an overview of the Barrel TOF detector as described in the recently submitted
technical design report will be given and the performance on the particle identification, event
separation and event sorting based on the Barrel TOF will be discussed.