We describe the principles and measured performance of custom configurable 32-channel shaper/digitizer Front End Electronics (FEE) cards with 14-bit dynamic range for gain-adjustable photon ...detectors. The electronics has been designed for the PHOS calorimeter of ALICE with avalanche photodiode (APD) readout operated at −25
°C ambient temperature and a signal shaping time of 1
μs. The electronics has also been adopted by the EMCal detector of ALICE with the same APD readout, but operated at an ambient temperature of +20
°C and with a shaping time of 100
ns. The CR-RC2 signal shapers on the FEE cards are implemented in discrete logic on a 10-layer board with two shaper sections for each input channel. The two shaper sections with gain ratio of 16:1 are digitized by 10-bit ADCs and provide an effective dynamic range of 14 bits. Gain adjustment for each individual APD is available through 32 bias voltage control registers of 10-bit range. The fixed gains and shaping times of the pole-zero compensated shapers are defined prior to FEE production by the values of a few R and C components. For trigger purposes, “fast OR” outputs with 12-bit dynamic range are available. FPGA based slave logic, combined with a USB processor supports a variety of remote control and monitoring features, including APD gain calibration. The measurements presented here for APDs at −25
°C ambient temperature and 1
μs shaping time achieve an average RMS noise level of 0.25 ADC counts or 290 electrons.The linearity over the dynamic range is better than 1%, as is the uniformity of shaping time and gain over 32 channels. Due to the excellent correspondence of the output pulse shape with offline fit, a differential timing resolution of less than 1.5
ns between channels has been achieved at ca. 2
GeV, i.e. at 1.5% of the dynamic range of PHOS.
Charged-pion-interferometry measurements were made with respect to the second- and third-order event plane for Au+Au collisions at sqrts_{NN}=200 GeV. A strong azimuthal-angle dependence of the ...extracted Gaussian-source radii was observed with respect to both the second- and third-order event planes. The results for the second-order dependence indicate that the initial eccentricity is reduced during the medium evolution, which is consistent with previous results. In contrast, the results for the third-order dependence indicate that the initial triangular shape is significantly reduced and potentially reversed by the end of the medium evolution, and that the third-order oscillations are largely dominated by the dynamical effects from triangular flow.
The production cross section of electrons from semileptonic decays of beauty hadrons was measured at mid-rapidity (| y | < 0.8) in the transverse momentum range 1 < p T < 8 GeV / c with the ALICE ...experiment at the CERN LHC in pp collisions at a center of mass energy s = 7 TeV using an integrated luminosity of 2.2 nb - 1 . Electrons from beauty hadron decays were selected based on the displacement of the decay vertex from the collision vertex. A perturbative QCD calculation agrees with the measurement within uncertainties. The data were extrapolated to the full phase space to determine the total cross section for the production of beauty quarkaantiquark pairs.
The inclusive transverse momentum (p T) distributions of primary charged particles are measured in the pseudo-rapidity range | IDT | 30 GeV / c . In peripheral collisions (70a80%), only moderate ...suppression (R A A = 0.6 a 0.7) and a weak p T dependence is observed. The measured nuclear modification factors are compared to other measurements and model calculations.
A search for photon pairs produced from the annihilation of quarks and of pions in relativistic heavy ion collisions may provide confirmation of a quark hadron phase transition. If there is no phase ...transition, the resulting high temperatures could lead to a much larger production of large mass pairs from pion annihilation, and may even carry a clear signature of kaon annihilation.
The ALICE Collaboration has measured inclusive J / I production in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy s = 2.76 TeV at the LHC. The results presented in this Letter refer to the rapidity ranges ...| y | < 0.9 and 2.5 < y < 4 and have been obtained by measuring the electron and muon pair decay channels, respectively. The integrated luminosities for the two channels are L int e = 1.1 nb - 1 and L int mu = 19.9 nb - 1 , and the corresponding signal statistics are N J / I e + e - = 59 +/- 14 and N J / I mu + mu - = 1364 +/- 53 . We present d I J / I / d y for the two rapidity regions under study and, for the forward-y range, d 2 I J / I / d y d p t in the transverse momentum domain 0 < p t < 8 GeV / c . The results are compared with previously published results at s = 7 TeV and with theoretical calculations.
The p T -differential inclusive production cross section of the prompt charm-strange meson D s + in the rapidity range | y | < 0.5 was measured in protonaproton collisions at s = 7 TeV at the LHC ...using the ALICE detector. The analysis was performed on a data sample of 2.98 X 10 8 events collected with a minimum-bias trigger. The corresponding integrated luminosity is L int = 4.8 nb - 1 . Reconstructing the decay D s + a I pi + , with I a K - K + , and its charge conjugate, about 480 D s +/- mesons were counted, after selection cuts, in the transverse momentum range 2 < p T < 12 GeV / c . The results are compared with predictions from models based on perturbative QCD. The ratios of the cross sections of four D meson species (namely D 0 , D + , D a + and D s +) were determined both as a function of p T and integrated over p T after extrapolating to full p T range, together with the strangeness suppression factor in charm fragmentation. The obtained values are found to be compatible within uncertainties with those measured by other experiments in e + e - , ep and pp interactions at various centre-of-mass energies.
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