Time of flight detector

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A time of flight (TOF) detector is a particle detector which can discriminate between a lighter and a heavier elementary particle of same momentum using their time of flight between two scintillators. The first of the scintillators activates a clock upon being hit while the other stops the clock upon being hit. If the two masses are denoted by m1and m2 and have velocities v1 and v2 then the time of flight difference is given by

\delta t = L\left(\frac{1}{v_1}-\frac{1}{v_2}\right)\approx \frac{Lc}{2p^2}(m_1^2-m_2^2)

where L is the distance between the scintillators. The approximation is in the relativistic limit at momentum p and c denotes the speed of light in vacuum. Usually, δt is the apparatus' time resolution (\sim200ps).

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