Particle identification with the ALICE Time-Of-Flight detector at the LHC

High performance Particle Identification system (PID) is a distinguishing characteristic of the ALICE experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Charged particles in the intermediate momentum range are identified in ALICE by the Time-Of-Flight (TOF) detector. The TOF exploits the Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) technology, capable of an intrinsic time resolution at the level of few tens of ps with an overall efficiency close to 100% and a large operation plateau. The full system is made of 1593 MRPC chambers with a total area of 141 m2, covering the pseudorapidity interval [−0.9,+0.9] and the full azimuthal angle. ICE TOF system has shown very stable operation during the first 3 years of collisions at the LHC. In this paper a summary of the system performance as well as main results with data from collisions will be reported.