Absorbed doses and radiation damage during the 11 years of LEP operation

During the 11 years of operation of the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), synchrotron radiation was emitted in the tunnel. This ionizing radiation induced degradation in organic insulators and structural materials, as well as in electronics. Annual dosimetric measurements have shown that the level of radiation increased with the ninth power of the beam energy. During the machine shut-downs and at the end of the operation, samples of rigid and flexible polymeric insulators (magnet-coil resins and cable insulations) were taken out and checked for their integrity. The test results are compared with the results obtained during the qualification of the materials, 12 to 15 years ago. At that time, lifetime predictions were done; they are now compared with the real time aged materials

On-Line Radiation Test Facility for Industrial Equipment needed for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

The future Large Hadron Collider to be built at CERN will use superconducting magnets cooled down to 1.2 K. To preserve the superconductivity, the energy deposition dose levels in equipment located outside the cryostat, in the LHC tunnel, are calculated to be of the order of 1 to 10 Gy per year. At such dose levels, no major radiation-damage problems are to be expected, and the possibility of installing Commercial Of The Shelf (COTS) electronic equipment in the LHC tunnel along the accelerator is considered. To this purpose, industrial electronic equipment and circuits have to be qualified and tested against radiation to insure their long term stability and reliability. An on-line radiation test facility has been setup at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) and a program of on-line tests for electronic equipment is ongoing. Equipment tested includes Industrial Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) from several manufacturers, standard VME modules, Fieldbuses like Profibus, WorldFIP and CAN, various electronic cards, power converter equipment and cryogenic components. The irradiation is taking place in one of the target areas of the CERN SPS. The radiation is typical of a proton accelerator, it includes mainly gammas and neutrons, plus some some high-energy particles

Synchrotron Radiation Effects at LEP

With the increase of the LEP beam energy, synchrotron radiation effects become ever more important. Around the experiments, masks have been successfully used to absorb the higher rates, and photon bac kgrounds have not been a problem. Elsewhere around the ring, however, the increased radiated power has adversely affected various accelerator components; sections of the vacuum chamber, electronics, c ables and beam instrumentation equipment have all suffered. Furthermore, the use of wiggler magnets to control the bunch size has given rise to local problems on nearby separator equipment. These effe cts will be presented, together with the steps taken to avoid further difficulties at the higher energies and higher beam currents foreseen in future

Elliptic flow of charged particles in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV

We report the first measurement of charged particle elliptic flow in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region (|$\eta$|<0.8) and transverse momentum range 0.2< $p_{\rm T}$< 5.0 GeV/$c$. The elliptic flow signal v$_2$, measured using the 4-particle correlation method, averaged over transverse momentum and pseudorapidity is 0.087 $\pm$ 0.002 (stat) $\pm$ 0.004 (syst) in the 40-50% centrality class. The differential elliptic flow v$_2(p_{\rm T})$ reaches a maximum of 0.2 near $p_{\rm T}$ = 3 GeV/$c$. Compared to RHIC Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV, the elliptic flow increases by about 30%. Some hydrodynamic model predictions which include viscous corrections are in agreement with the observed increase.Comment: 10 pages, 4 captioned figures, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/389

Alignment of the ALICE Inner Tracking System with cosmic-ray tracks

37 pages, 15 figures, revised version, accepted by JINSTALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment devoted to investigating the strongly interacting matter created in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC energies. The ALICE ITS, Inner Tracking System, consists of six cylindrical layers of silicon detectors with three different technologies; in the outward direction: two layers of pixel detectors, two layers each of drift, and strip detectors. The number of parameters to be determined in the spatial alignment of the 2198 sensor modules of the ITS is about 13,000. The target alignment precision is well below 10 micron in some cases (pixels). The sources of alignment information include survey measurements, and the reconstructed tracks from cosmic rays and from proton-proton collisions. The main track-based alignment method uses the Millepede global approach. An iterative local method was developed and used as well. We present the results obtained for the ITS alignment using about 10^5 charged tracks from cosmic rays that have been collected during summer 2008, with the ALICE solenoidal magnet switched off.Peer reviewe

Transverse momentum spectra of charged particles in proton-proton collisions at s=900\sqrt{s} = 900 GeV with ALICE at the LHC

The inclusive charged particle transverse momentum distribution is measured in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 900$ GeV at the LHC using the ALICE detector. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region $(|\eta|<0.8)$ over the transverse momentum range $0.15<p_{\rm T}<10$ GeV/$c$. The correlation between transverse momentum and particle multiplicity is also studied. Results are presented for inelastic (INEL) and non-single-diffractive (NSD) events. The average transverse momentum for $|\eta|<0.8$ is $\left<p_{\rm T}\right>_{\rm INEL}=0.483\pm0.001$ (stat.) $\pm0.007$ (syst.) GeV/$c$ and \left_{\rm NSD}=0.489\pm0.001 (stat.) $\pm0.007$ (syst.) GeV/$c$, respectively. The data exhibit a slightly larger $\left<p_{\rm T}\right>$ than measurements in wider pseudorapidity intervals. The results are compared to simulations with the Monte Carlo event generators PYTHIA and PHOJET.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/390

The ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is a general-purpose, heavy-ion detector at the CERN LHC which focuses on QCD, the strong-interaction sector of the Standard Model. It is designed to address the physics of strongly interacting matter and the quark-gluon plasma at extreme values of energy density and temperature in nucleus-nucleus collisions. Besides running with Pb ions, the physics programme includes collisions with lighter ions, lower energy running and dedicated proton-nucleus runs. ALICE will also take data with proton beams at the top LHC energy to collect reference data for the heavy-ion programme and to address several QCD topics for which ALICE is complementary to the other LHC detectors. The ALICE detector has been built by a collaboration including currently over 1000 physicists and engineers from 105 Institutes in 30 countries. Its overall dimensions are 161626 m3 with a total weight of approximately 10 000 t. The experiment consists of 18 different detector systems each with its own specific technology choice and design constraints, driven both by the physics requirements and the experimental conditions expected at LHC. The most stringent design constraint is to cope with the extreme particle multiplicity anticipated in central Pb-Pb collisions. The different subsystems were optimized to provide high-momentum resolution as well as excellent Particle Identification (PID) over a broad range in momentum, up to the highest multiplicities predicted for LHC. This will allow for comprehensive studies of hadrons, electrons, muons, and photons produced in the collision of heavy nuclei. Most detector systems are scheduled to be installed and ready for data taking by mid-2008 when the LHC is scheduled to start operation, with the exception of parts of the Photon Spectrometer (PHOS), Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) and Electro Magnetic Calorimeter (EMCal). These detectors will be completed for the high-luminosity ion run expected in 2010. This paper describes in detail the detector components as installed for the first data taking in the summer of 2008