Test beam studies of silicon timing for use in calorimetry

The high luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN is expected to provide instantaneous luminosities of 5×1034cm−2s−1. The high luminosities expected at the HL-LHC will be accompanied by a factor of 5-10 more pileup compared with LHC conditions in 2015, further increasing the challenge for particle identification and event reconstruction. Precision timing allows us to extend calorimetric measurements into such a high density environment by subtracting the energy deposits from pileup interactions. Calorimeters employing silicon as the active component have recently become a viable choice for the HL-LHC and future collider experiments which face very high radiation environments. In this paper, we present studies of basic calorimetric and precision timing measurements using a prototype composed of tungsten absorber and silicon sensor as the active medium. We show that for the bulk of electromagnetic showers induced by electrons in the range of 20-30 GeV, we can achieve time resolutions better than 25 ps per single pad sensor.