Fast simulation of ToF spectrometers

A fast simulation method was developed for analysis of time-of-flight spectrometers and it has been successfully used to optimize parameters of a real instrument. In the general case, the function of a time-of-flight spectrometer is best modeled using the Monte Carlo method, That involves calculation of a high number of ion trajectories, which is time consuming. We have found a way to reduce the calculation time greatly by introducing a simplification and using pre-computed data independent on the ion mass and charge. The procedure makes it computationally feasible to run iterative optimizations. By comparing the results with those of a realistic simulation on a selected case, we have verified that there is no noticeable influence on the results