Time resolution studies for scintillating plastics coupled to silicon photo-multipliers

We present results for time resolution studies performed on three different scintillating plastics and two silicon photo-multipliers. These studies are intended to determine whether scintillating plastic/silicon photo-multiplier systems can be employed to provide a fast trigger signal for NICA's Multi Purpose Detector (MPD). Our results show that such a system made of cells with transverse dimensions of order of a few cm, coupled to silicon photo-multipliers, provides a time resolution of about 50 ps, which can be even further improved to attain the MPD trigger requirements of 20 ps.