The design, construction, and commissioning of the ALICE Time-Projection Chamber (TPC) is described. It is the main device for pattern recognition, tracking, and identification of charged particles ...in the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. The TPC is cylindrical in shape with a volume close to 90m3 and is operated in a 0.5T solenoidal magnetic field parallel to its axis.
In this paper we describe in detail the design considerations for this detector for operation in the extreme multiplicity environment of central Pb–Pb collisions at LHC energy. The implementation of the resulting requirements into hardware (field cage, read-out chambers, electronics), infrastructure (gas and cooling system, laser-calibration system), and software led to many technical innovations which are described along with a presentation of all the major components of the detector, as currently realized. We also report on the performance achieved after completion of the first round of stand-alone calibration runs and demonstrate results close to those specified in the TPC Technical Design Report.
Two-particle correlation functions of negative hadrons over wide phase space, and transverse mass spectra of negative hadrons and deuterons near mid-rapidity have been measured in central Pb+Pb ...collisions at 158 GeV per nucleon by the NA49 experiment at the CERN SPS. A novel Coulomb correction procedure for the negative two-particle correlations is employed making use of the measured oppositely charged particle correlation. Within an expanding source scenario these results are used to extract the dynamic characteristics of the hadronic source, resolving the ambiguities between the temperature and transverse expansion velocity of the source, that are unavoidable when single and two particle spectra are analysed separately. The source shape, the total duration of the source expansion, the duration of particle emission, the freeze-out temperature and the longitudinal and transverse expansion velocities are deduced.
We report on first measurements of low-mass electron-positron pairs in Pb-Au collisions at the CERN SPS beam energy of 40 AGeV. The observed pair yield integrated over the range of invariant masses ...0.2<m</=1 GeV/c(2) is enhanced over the expectation from neutral meson decays by a factor of 5.9+/-1.5(stat)+/-1.2(syst data)+/-1.8(syst meson decays), somewhat larger than previously observed at the higher energy of 158 AGeV. The results are discussed with reference to model calculations based on pi(+)pi(-)-->e(+)e(-) annihilation with a modified rho propagator. They may be linked to chiral symmetry restoration and support the notion that the in-medium modifications of the rho are more driven by baryon density than by temperature.
Signal shapes in multiwire proportional chamber-based TPCs Windelband, J. Alme T. Alt H. Appelshäuser M. Arslandok R. Averbeck E. Bartsch P. Becht L. Bratrud P. Braun-Munzinger H. Buesching H. Caines P. Christiansen F. Costa U. Frankenfeld J. J. Gaardhøje C. Garabatos P. Glässel T. Gunji H. Hamagaki J. W. Harris E. Hellbär H. Helstrup M. Ivanov J. Jung M. Jung A. Junique A. Kalweit R. Keidel S. Kirsch M. Kleiner M. Kowalski M. Krüger C. Lippmann M. Mager S. Masciocchi A. Matyja D. Miśkowiec R. H. Munzer L. Musa B. S. Nielsen J. Otwinowski M. Pikna A. Rehman R. Renfordt D. Röhrich H. S. Scheid C. Schmidt H. R. Schmidt K. Schweda Y. Sekiguchi D. Silvermyr B. Sitar J. Stachel K. Ullaland R. Veenhof V. Vislavicius J. Wiechula B
arXiv.org,
12/2023
Paper, Journal Article
Open access
A large-volume Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main tracking and particle identification (PID) detector of the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. PID in the TPC is performed via specific ...energy-loss measurements (dE/dx), which are derived from the average pulse-height distribution of ionization generated by charged-particle tracks traversing the TPC volume. During Runs 1 and 2, until 2018, the gas amplification stage was based on multiwire proportional chambers (MWPC). Signals from the MWPC show characteristic long negative tails after an initial positive peak due to the long ion drift times in the MWPC amplification region. This so-called ion tail can lead to a significant amplitude loss in subsequently measured signals, especially in the high-multiplicity environment of high-energy Pb-Pb collisions, which results in a degradation of the dE/dx resolution. A detailed study of the signal shapes measured with the ALICE TPC with the Ne-CO2 (90-10) and Ar-CO2 (90-10) gas mixtures is presented, and the results are compared with three-dimensional Garfield simulations. The impact of the ion tail on the PID performance is studied employing the ALICE simulation framework and the feasibility of an offline correction procedure to account for the ion tail is demonstrated.
The measurement of the production of charm jets, identified by the presence of a D$^{0}$ meson in the jet constituents, is presented in proton–proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of $ ...\sqrt{s} $ = 5.02 and 13 TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN LHC. The D$^{0}$ mesons were reconstructed from their hadronic decay D$^{0}$ → K$^{−}$π$^{+}$ and the respective charge conjugate. Jets were reconstructed from D$^{0}$-meson candidates and charged particles using the anti-k$_{T}$ algorithm, in the jet transverse momentum range 5 < p$_{T,chjet}$< 50 GeV/c, pseudorapidity |η$_{jet}$| < 0.9 − R, and with the jet resolution parameters R = 0.2, 0.4, 0.6. The distribution of the jet momentum fraction carried by a D$^{0}$ meson along the jet axis $ \left({z}_{\Big\Vert}^{\textrm{ch}}\right) $ was measured in the range 0.4 <$ {z}_{\Big\Vert}^{\textrm{ch}} $< 1.0 in four ranges of the jet transverse momentum. Comparisons of results for different collision energies and jet resolution parameters are also presented. The measurements are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo event generators based on leading-order and next-to-leading-order perturbative quantum chromodynamics calculations. A generally good description of the main features of the data is obtained in spite of a few discrepancies at low p$_{T,chjet}$. Measurements were also done for R = 0.3 at $ \sqrt{s} $ = 5.02 and are shown along with their comparisons to theoretical predictions in an appendix to this paper.graphic not available: see fulltext
We present the combined results on electron-pair production in 158 GeV/n Pb-Au (\(\sqrt{s}\) = 17.2 GeV) collisions taken at the CERN SPS in 1995 and 1996, and give a detailed account of the data ...analysis. The enhancement over the reference of neutral meson decays amounts to a factor of 2.31 \(\pm0.19 (stat.)\pm0.55 (syst.)\pm0.69 (decays)\) for semi-central collisions (28\(\%\)\(\sigma/\sigma_{geo}\)) when yields are integrated over m > 200 MeV/c2 in invariant mass. The measured yield, its stronger-than-linear scaling with \(N_{\rm ch}\), and the dominance of low pair pt strongly suggest an interpretation as thermal radiation from pion annihilation in the hadronic fireball. The shape of the excess centring at \(m\approx\) 500 MeV/c2, however, cannot be described without strong medium modifications of the \(\rho\) meson. The results are put into perspective by comparison to predictions from Brown-Rho scaling governed by chiral symmetry restoration, and from the spectral-function many-body treatment in which the approach to the phase boundary is less explicit.
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