Precision timing measurement of phototube pulses using a flash analog-to-digital converter

We present the timing characteristics of the flash ADC readout of the GlueX forward calorimeter, which depends on precise measurement of arrival time of pulses from FEU 84-3 photomultiplier tubes to suppress backgrounds. The tests presented were performed using two different 250 MHz prototype flash ADC devices, one with eight-bit and one with 12-bit sampling depth. All measured time resolutions were better than 1 ns, independent of signal size, which is the design goal for the GlueX forward calorimeter. For pulses with an amplitude of 100 mV the timing resolution is 0.57±0.18 ns, while for 500 mV pulses it is 0.24±0.08 ns.