Time-of-flight detector explained

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 = L\left( (1)/(- v _{1}) (1)/(v _{2}) \right) ≈ (Lc)/(2 p ^{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.

See also

• Time-of-flight mass spectrometry