Figure 3

Arrival time of particles in the VZERO detectors relative to the beam crossing time (time zero). A number of beam-halo or beam--gas events are visible as secondary peaks in VZERO-A (left panel) and VZERO-C (right panel). This is because particles produced in background interactions arrive at earlier times in one or the other of the two counters The majority of the signals have the correct arrival time expected for collisions around the nominal vertex.