Time-of-flight detector
Template:Short descriptionTemplate:Onesource 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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 <math>m_1</math>and <math> m_2</math> and have velocities <math>v_1</math> and <math>v_2</math> then the time of flight difference is given by
- <math>\Delta t = L\left(\frac{1}{v_1}-\frac{1}{v_2}\right)\approx \frac{Lc}{2p^2}(m_1^2-m_2^2)</math>
where <math>L</math> is the distance between the scintillators. The approximation is in the relativistic limit at momentum <math>p</math> and <math>c</math> denotes the speed of light in vacuum.