Performance of an economic time-of-flight scintillator hodoscope

A time-of-flight hodoscope consisting of 16 slabs of plastic scintillator, each 90 x 4 x 1 cm3, viewed by only 8 (instead of 32) photomultipliers, is described. The slabs are coupled to the photomultipliers following a coding system that allows an unambiguous identification if only one particle at a time has to be detected. A total time-of-flight resolution of 615 ps fwhm was achieved, with an intrinsic time resolution of the hodoscope better than 350 ps. The spatial resolution along each slab was 3.5 cm and the cross-talk due to unrecognized events 1.3%. (orig.)