Time of flight detector

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 $m\_1$and $m\_2$ and have velocities $v\_1$ and $v\_2$ then the time of flight difference is given by:$delta\; t\; =\; Lleft(frac\{1\}\{v\_1\}-frac\{1\}\{v\_2\}\; ight)approx\; frac\{Lc\}\{2p^2\}(m\_1^2-m\_2^2)$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, $delta\; t$ is the apparatus' time resolution ($sim$200ps).

See also

*Time-of-flight
*Time-of-flight mass spectrometry