Speaker
Dag Toppe Larsen
(University of Bergen)
Description
ALICE is a dedicated heavy-ion experiment at CERN LHC. It aims to
reproduce the state of matter shortly after the Big Bang, i.e. the
quark-gluon plasma. Each lead-lead collision will produce the order of
ten thousand new particles. Detailed study of the event requires precise
measurements of the particle tracks. An 95m3 Time Projection Chamber
(TPC) with more than 500 000 read-out pads was built as the main central
barrel tracker. Collisions can be recorded at a rate of up to about 1
kHz. The front-end electronics, designed from FPGAs and custom ASICs,
performs shaping, amplification, digitalization and digital filtering of
the signals. The data is forwarded to DAQ via 216 1.25 Gb/s
fiber-optical links. Configuration, control and monitoring is done by an
embedded Linux system. The close proximity of the electronics to the
collisions exposes it to radiation, which required radiation tolerant
design strategies.
First results on the performance of the front-end electronics and the
distributed detector control system are presented.
Primary author
Dag Toppe Larsen
(University of Bergen)
Co-author
- ALICE TPC collaboration
(CERN)