Speaker
Ulrich Frankenfeld
(GSI Darmstadt)
Description
The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main tracking detector of the
heavy ion Experiment ALICE at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The
field gage manufactured of carbon fiber composites has a total volume of 95
m 3, the readout chambers instrument the two end-plates of the TPC
cylinder with an overall active area of 32.5 m 2. The detector covers the
pseudorapidity range |η| < 0.9 and is optimized to be operated in a high
multiplicity environment. The TPC has now been fully assembled and is
undergoing commissioning with cosmic rays and tracks produced by a UV
laser system. The system comprises a custom-designed electronic read-out
based on a low noise preamplifier/shaper chip, and a digital circuit with a 10-
bit 10-Msps ADC integrated into one chip for all 560000 read-out channels.
We will report on the status of commissioning including analysis of the
quality of track reconstruction and results on drift velocity, electron diffusion
and position resolution of the tracking chambers as well as on the overall
performance parameters of the detector.
Author
Ulrich Frankenfeld
(GSI Darmstadt)
