The time-of-flight technique for the HERMES experiment

Abstract This paper describes the use of the time-of-flight (TOF) technique as a particle identification method for the HERMES experiment. The TOF is measured by two 1 × 4 m 2 scintillation hodoscopes that initially were designed only for the first-level trigger. However, the suitable time structure of the HERA electron beam allows an extension of their functions to also measure the TOF for low momentum hadron identification. Using only these conventional hodoscopes, good particle identification was achieved for protons and pions in the momentum range up to 2.9 GeV / c and for kaons up to 1.5 GeV / c .