For the identification of low momentum charged particles and for event timing purposes a barrel Time-of-Flight (TOF) detector surrounding the interaction point is planned for the PANDA experiment at FAIR. Since the boundary conditions in terms of available radial space and radiation length are quite strict the favored layout is a hodoscope composed of several thousand small scintillating tiles (SciTils) read out by silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). A time resolution of well below 100 ps is aimed for. With the originally proposed 30 x 30 x 5 mm3 SciTils read out by two single 3 x 3 mm2 SiPMs at the rims of the scintillator the targeted time resolution can be just reached, but with a considerable position dependence across the scintillator surface. In this paper we discuss other design options to further improve the time resolution and its homogeneity. It will be shown that wide scintillating rods (SciRods) with a size of, e.g., 50 x 30 x 5 mm3 or longer and read out at opposite sides by a chain of four serially connected SiPMs a time resolution down to 50 ps can be reached without problems. In addition, the position dependence of the time resolution is negligible. These SciRods were tested in the laboratory with electrons of a 90Sr source and under real experimental conditions in a particle beam at CERN. The measured time resolutions using fast BC418 or BC420 plastic scintillators wrapped in aluminum foil were consistently between 45 and 75 ps dependent on the SciRod design. This is a significant improvement compared to the original SciTil layout.

PANDA is an experiment at the new FAIR facility at GSI and will, among other physics goals, perform charmonium spectroscopy and search for gluonic excitations using high luminosity antiproton beams up to 15 GeV/c. A high performance particle identification system applying DIRC detectors will allow pion/kaon separation up to 4 GeV/c. A Barrel DIRC with fused silica radiator bars or plates will surround the target at a radial distance of 48 cm and will cover a polar angle range of 22 to 140 degrees; a novel Endcap Disk DIRC built of a segmented fused silica disk of 210 cm diameter will be installed in the forward region to cover the polar angles from 5 to 22 degrees. The design of the optics and the readout of both DIRCs will be presented in this paper. Different prototypes were tested in particle beams. The performance of the latest prototypes, which are close to the final DIRC design, are discussed and compared to the PANDA requirements.