Calibration and performance of the AMS-02 time of flight detector in space

AMS-02 is a high energy particle detector deployed in May 19, 2011 on board of the International Space Station (ISS) where it is expected to be in operation for the ISS lifetime of at least a decade. The main goal of AMS-02 is the detection of cosmic rays and gammas from the GeV to the TeV energy region to search for anti-matter, dark matter and understanding the origin of the cosmic rays. The AMS-02 time of flight (TOF) detector provides the trigger to experiment and allows precise measurements of the cosmic rays velocity and charge magnitude from hydrogen to iron and above. With the data set acquired during the first two and a half years of operation in space, a precise time-dependent calibration for time, velocity and charge measured by the TOF had been developed. The TOF calibration methods are described and the AMS-02 TOF performance in space is presented.