The paper reviews recent progress in particle identification methods. A survey of motivations and requirements for particle identification in various experimental environments is followed by the main emphasis, which is on the recent development of Cherenkov counters, from upgrades of existing devices to a novel focusing radiator concept and new photon detectors. The impact of including a precise measurement of the time of arrival of Cherenkov photons to increase the kinematical region over which particle identification can be performed is discussed. The progress in dedicated time-of-flight counters with recently developed very fast single photon detectors is also evaluated.
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