Electronics of BESIII TOF Monitor System

This paper describes the control electronics for the time of flight (TOF) monitor system of BESIII. A 9U VME module is designed as the interface between the TOF monitor laser box and BESIII data acquisition system. It takes charge of enabling the laser source, sending trigger signals to the laser driver, controlling the optic path, and measuring the charge and arrival time of pulses from two reference phototubes. The module also sends a Level 1 trigger to the TOF readout system, after each trigger pulse to the laser source. The interface and control logic are implemented in one Altera field-programmable gate array, and signals from the reference PMTs of the laser system are digitized with the CERN HPTDC technique. A series of experimental tests show that the time resolution of the monitor electronics is better than 25 ps, and the relative methodical error of the charge measurement is less than 0.5% after quadratic fitting. The TOF monitor system was installed at the end of 2007 and has been operating continuously since then. A total time resolution of about 70 ps and a charge resolution of about 4% of the TOF counters have been obtained during field monitor tests.