The focusing DIRC: An innovative PID detector

The FDIRC (Focusing Detector of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) is a new concept of PID (Particle IDentification) detector aimed at separating kaons from pions up to a few GeV/c. It is the successor of the BABAR DIRC and benefits from the knowledge accumulated with a first FDIRC prototype built and operated at SLAC. The FDIRC is intended to be used in an environment with a luminosity 100 times higher than for BABAR and Belle. Backgrounds will be higher as well; yet, the FDIRC has been designed to perform at least as well as the BABAR DIRC. The main improvement is a complete redesign of the photon camera, moving from a huge tank of ultra-pure water to much smaller focusing cameras with solid fused-silica optics. Furthermore, the detection chain will be 10 times faster than in BABAR to reject more background and to measure more accurately Cherenkov angles. This is achieved using H-8500 MaPMTs and a new front-end electronics (FEE) with significantly improved timing precision, higher hit rate capability, and small dead time. A full-scale FDIRC prototype covering 1/12th of the barrel azimuth is installed at SLAC and has just started recording cosmic-ray data. In this paper, we summarize the FDIRC design, present the status of the prototype test at SLAC and review the ongoing work to analyse the data.