The Yale group from the Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory (WNSL) has assumed primary responsibility for the design and construction of the three TOF hodoscope stations. Within this project are four main efforts: design, fabrication, and testing of the individual hodoscope counters; photomultiplier high voltage supplies, control and readout; online calibration and monitoring system; and mechanical support structure. Within WNSL, excellent mechanical and technical support facilities (machine shop, electronics shop, technicians, engineers, CAD, etc.) are available for each of these efforts.
In Section 3.2.2 we discussed the design considerations driving the required granularity and timing characteristics of the scintillator hodoscopes. In this section we present a status report of the ongoing development efforts aimed towards the appropriate selection of detector components (e.g. scintillator, light guides, photomultiplier tubes, calibration system, readout electronics, etc.) which will allow the design goal of 200 ps RMS timing resolution to be met. Because the hodoscopes are the heart of the pattern recognition for charged particle tracking (see Section 4.3.1), it is imperative that the design goal of 200 ps timing resolution be met and maintained over the lifetime of the experiment. For this reason we are trying to exceed this design goal in our prototypes so as to provide adequate safety margin in the event of technical difficulties in actual operation.