Sources of Bias in Time-of-Flight Measurements - Riei Ishizeki 

The CDF experiment studies high energy proton anti-proton collisions
produced at the Fermilab Tevatron collider, located near Chicago,
Illinois.  The CDF-II detector uses a Time-of-Flight detector, based on
plastic scintillator and photomultiplier tubes, to identify charged kaons,
pions and protons produced in proton anti-proton collisions.  After
applying calibrations to the data recorded with the TOF detector, residual
biases were still observed in the measured arrival times of protons and
kaons.  The studies carried out here indicated that a significant
contribution to this bias comes from the detailed way in which light
propagates in plastic scintillator and the way the electrical signal
produced by the photomultiplier tube interacts with the front-end
electronics.  Application of this model to the calibration of the TOF
detector is expected to improve the timing resolution obtained at CDF, but
should also be applicable to a wide range of similar TOF detector systems.