Online Pattern Recognition for the ALICE High Level Trigger

The ALICE High Level Trigger has to process data online, in order to select interesting (sub)events, or to compress data efficiently by modeling techniques.Focusing on the main data source, the Time Projection Chamber (TPC), we present two pattern recognition methods under investigation: a sequential approach "cluster finder" and "track follower") and an iterative approach ("track candidate finder" and "cluster deconvoluter"). We show, that the former is suited for pp and low multiplicity PbPb collisions, whereas the latter might be applicable for high multiplicity PbPb collisions, if it turns out, that more than 8000 charged particles would have to be reconstructed inside the TPC. Based on the developed tracking schemes we show, that using modeling techniques a compression factor of around 10 might be achievableComment: Realtime Conference 2003, Montreal, Canada to be published in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science (TNS), 6 pages, 8 figure

Configurable Electronics with Low Noise and 14-bit Dynamic Range for Photodiode-based Photon Detectors

We describe the principles and measured performance characteristics of custom configurable 32-channel shaper/digitizer Front End Electronics (FEE) cards with 14-bit dynamic range for use with 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 $1 {\mu}s$. 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 100ns. 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 $1 {\mu}s$ 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

Photodiode read-out of the ALICE photon spectrometer PbWO4PbWO_{4} crystals

Proposal of abstract for LEB99, Snowmass, Colorado, 20-24 September 1999The PHOton Spectrometer of the ALICE experiment is an electromagnetic calorimeter of high granularity consisting of 17280 lead-tungstate (PWO) crystals of dimensions 22x22x180 mm3, read out by large-area PIN-diodes with very low-noise front-end electronics. The crystal assembly is operated at -25C to increase the PWO light yield. A 16.1x17.1 mm2 photodiode, optimized for the PWO emissio spectrum at 400-500 nm, has been developed. The 20x20 mm2 preamplifier PCB is attached to the back side of the diode ceramic frame. The charge sensitive preamplifier is built in discrete logic with two input JFETs for optimum matching with the ~150pF PIN-diode. A prototype shaper has been designed and built in discrete logic. For a detector matrix of 64 units the measured ENCs are between 450-550e at -25C. Beam tests demonstrate that the required energy resolution is reached.Summary:The PHOton Spectrometer of the ALICE experiment is an electromagnetic calorimeter of high granularity consisting of 17280 lead-tungstate (PWO) crystals of dimensions 22x22x180 mm3, coupled to large-area PIN-diodes with matching low-noise preamplifiers. PHOS is optimized for measuring photons, pi0s and eta mesons in the momentum ranges 0.5-10, 1-10 and 2-10 GeV/c, respectively, and is designed for the expected large number of particles that will be produced in central Pb-Pb collisions. Lead tungstate (PWO) is a fast scintillating crystal with a rather complex emission spectrum, consisting of two components: a blue component peaking at 420 nm and a green component peaking at 480-520 nm. The light yield of PWO at room temperature is low compared with other heavy scintillating crystals, for instance BGO. However, the yield depends strongly on the temperature with a coefficient of ~-2 degree. At the selected operating temperature of -25C the yield is about a factor of 3 higher compared to room temperature. Still, in order to reach the required energy resolution for a PHOS channel, an ENC noise of less than 600e for the PIN-diode-preamplifier-shaper stage is required. This is a very low value taking into account the high capacitance of 150-200 pF of the large area PIN-diodes. In collaboration with the PHOS project, the company AME (Horten, Norway) has designed and produced a PIN-photodiode optimized for the cross-section and spectral responsivity of the PHOS PWO crystal. The photodiode has an active area of 17.1x16.1 mm2 and is fabricated on n-type silicon material of thickness 280 um. The wafer specific resistivity is between 3000 and 6000 ohm-cm, which corresponds to a depletion voltage of 70V. The photodiode response is optimized for the spectral region 400-500 nm in order to match the PWO emission spectrum. The PIN-diode is mounted on a ceramic substrate 0.65 mm thick. On this substrate the diode is surrounded by a ceramic frame. The preamplifier PCB of dimension 20x20 mm2 is attached to the back side of the frame. The PIN-diode and bondings to ground and preamplifier input are protected by an optically transparent epoxy layer. The front side of the PIN-diode is glued onto the endface of the PWO crystal with optically transparent glue (Melt-Mount Quick-Stick, Cargille Laboratories, USA). Each crystal is wrapped in White Tyvek to ensure maximum light collection efficiency and optical insulation between the crystals. The PHOS detector consists of four independent modules, each with 4320 channels. The crystal assembly with the photo detectors are operated at -25 +/- 0.3C. The power dissipation per module is ~1 kW. The charge sensitive preamplifier is an operational amplifier built in discrete logic and with two input JFETs (BF861A). Using two JFETs in parallel gives the lowest noise for detector capacitance >100 pF. A prototype shaper, comprising three amplification stages, has been designed and built in discrete logic. For a PIN-diode with capacitance ~150 pF and a leakage current <1 nA under cooling, calculations give optimum time differentiation and integration constants around 3 microsec. For a detector matrix of 64 units the measured ENCs are between 450-550 e at -25C. Beam tests of this matrix show that the required energy resolution for the PHOS is reached

Real-time TPC Analysis with the ALICE High-Level Trigger

The ALICE High-Level Trigger processes data online, to either select interesting (sub-) events, or to compress data efficiently by modeling techniques. Focusing on the main data source, the Time Projection Chamber, the architecure of the system and the current state of the tracking and compression methods are outlined.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, to be published in NIM

The ALICE DAQ: Current Status and Future Challenges

Proposal of abstract for CHEP2000The ALICE DAQ system has been designed to support an aggregate eventr building bandwidth of up to 2.5 GByte/s and a storage capability o fup to 1.25 GByte/s to mass storage.A general framework called the ALICE Data Acquisition Test Environment (DATE) system has been developed as a basis for prototyping the components of the DAQ. DATE supports a wide spectrum of configurations from simple systems to more complex systems with multiple detectors and multiple event builders.Prototypes of several key components of the ALICE DAQ have been developed and integrated with the DATE system, such as the ALICE Detector Data Link, the online data monitoring from ROOT and the interface to the Mass Storage systems. Combined tests of several of these components are pursued during the ALICE Data Challenges.The architecture of the ALICE DAQ system will be presented together with the current status of the different prototypes. The recent addition of a Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) to ALICE has required a revision of the requirements and the architecture of the DAQ. This will allow a higher level of data selection. These new opportunities and implementation challenges will also be presented

Charge separation relative to the reaction plane in Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=2.76\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}= 2.76 TeV

Measurements of charge dependent azimuthal correlations with the ALICE detector at the LHC are reported for Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ TeV. Two- and three-particle charge-dependent azimuthal correlations in the pseudo-rapidity range $|\eta| < 0.8$ are presented as a function of the collision centrality, particle separation in pseudo-rapidity, and transverse momentum. A clear signal compatible with a charge-dependent separation relative to the reaction plane is observed, which shows little or no collision energy dependence when compared to measurements at RHIC energies. This provides a new insight for understanding the nature of the charge dependent azimuthal correlations observed at RHIC and LHC energies.Comment: 12 pages, 3 captioned figures, authors from page 2 to 6, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/286

Multiplicity dependence of jet-like two-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

Two-particle angular correlations between unidentified charged trigger and associated particles are measured by the ALICE detector in p-Pb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The transverse-momentum range 0.7 $< p_{\rm{T}, assoc} < p_{\rm{T}, trig} <$ 5.0 GeV/$c$ is examined, to include correlations induced by jets originating from low momen\-tum-transfer scatterings (minijets). The correlations expressed as associated yield per trigger particle are obtained in the pseudorapidity range $|\eta|<0.9$. The near-side long-range pseudorapidity correlations observed in high-multiplicity p-Pb collisions are subtracted from both near-side short-range and away-side correlations in order to remove the non-jet-like components. The yields in the jet-like peaks are found to be invariant with event multiplicity with the exception of events with low multiplicity. This invariance is consistent with the particles being produced via the incoherent fragmentation of multiple parton--parton scatterings, while the yield related to the previously observed ridge structures is not jet-related. The number of uncorrelated sources of particle production is found to increase linearly with multiplicity, suggesting no saturation of the number of multi-parton interactions even in the highest multiplicity p-Pb collisions. Further, the number scales in the intermediate multiplicity region with the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions estimated with a Glauber Monte-Carlo simulation.Comment: 23 pages, 6 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 17, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/161

Multi-particle azimuthal correlations in p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Measurements of multi-particle azimuthal correlations (cumulants) for charged particles in p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions are presented. They help address the question of whether there is evidence for global, flow-like, azimuthal correlations in the p-Pb system. Comparisons are made to measurements from the larger Pb-Pb system, where such evidence is established. In particular, the second harmonic two-particle cumulants are found to decrease with multiplicity, characteristic of a dominance of few-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions. However, when a $|\Delta \eta|$ gap is placed to suppress such correlations, the two-particle cumulants begin to rise at high-multiplicity, indicating the presence of global azimuthal correlations. The Pb-Pb values are higher than the p-Pb values at similar multiplicities. In both systems, the second harmonic four-particle cumulants exhibit a transition from positive to negative values when the multiplicity increases. The negative values allow for a measurement of $v_{2}\{4\}$ to be made, which is found to be higher in Pb-Pb collisions at similar multiplicities. The second harmonic six-particle cumulants are also found to be higher in Pb-Pb collisions. In Pb-Pb collisions, we generally find $v_{2}\{4\} \simeq v_{2}\{6\}\neq 0$ which is indicative of a Bessel-Gaussian function for the $v_{2}$ distribution. For very high-multiplicity Pb-Pb collisions, we observe that the four- and six-particle cumulants become consistent with 0. Finally, third harmonic two-particle cumulants in p-Pb and Pb-Pb are measured. These are found to be similar for overlapping multiplicities, when a $|\Delta\eta| > 1.4$ gap is placed.Comment: 25 pages, 11 captioned figures, 3 tables, authors from page 20, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/87