Editing Time-of-flight detector (section)

{{Short description|Particle detector}}{{onesource|date=December 2009}}
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 [[scintillator]]s.<ref>{{Cite web |title=TOF Detector {{!}} Hamamatsu Photonics |url=https://hep.hamamatsu.com/eu/en/detector-type/tof-detector.html |access-date=2024-11-25 |website=hep.hamamatsu.com |language=en}}</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.