Tesi Di Laurea Commissioning With Cosmic Rays of The ALICE Muon Trigger System

` UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TORINO ` FACOLTA DI SCIENZE MATEMATICHE, FISICHE E NATURALI CORSO DI LAUREA MAGISTRALE IN FISICA DELLE INTERAZIONI
FONDAMENTALI
Tesi di Laurea Commissioning with cosmic rays of the ALICE Muon Trigger System
Relatore: Prof. Ermanno Vercellin Controrelatore: Prof. Stefano Argir o
Candidato: Claudio Geuna
Anno Accademico 2008-2009
Contents
1 Physics at the ALICE experiment 1.1 Heavy Ion Collisions (AA) . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 The Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) . . . . 1.1.2 Experimental probes of QGP formation 1.2 Proton-Proton collisions (pp) . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 A benchmark for heavy ion physics . . . 2 The ALICE experiment 2.1 Overview of the ALICE detectors . . . . . 2.2 The Muon Spectrometer . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Absorbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Dipole Magnet . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Tracking Chambers System . . . . 2.2.4 The ALICE Muon Trigger System 4 5 6 8 10 10 12 12 19 19 22 22 23 29 30 30 31 35 38 40 42 42 44 47 50 54 66 80 85 91
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3 RPCs for the ALICE Muon Trigger 3.1 Requirements for the ALICE Muon RPCs . . . . 3.2 RPC design and working principle . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Signal formation process and gas mixture 3.2.2 RPC Working Parameters . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Gas mixtures: avalanche vs streamer . . . . . . . 3.4 Characteristics of the ALICE Muon RPCs . . . . 3.4.1 Nucleus-Nucleus collisions . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2 Proton-Proton collisions . . . . . . . . . . 4 RPCs commissioning with cosmic rays 4.1 Eciency evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Cosmic rays commissioning in the ALICE Cavern 4.2.1 Tests in Streamer Mode . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 Preliminary tests in Avalanche Mode . . . 4.2.3 Tests in Avalanche Mode . . . . . . . . . Conclusions Bibliography
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Physics at the ALICE experiment

High-energy physics has established and validated over the last decades a detailed, though still incomplete, theory of elementary particles and their fundamental interaction: the Standard Model. Such theory has encountered a lot of success in explaining the phenomenology of interactions at a fundamental level, but further investigations are necessary in order, on one hand, to answer still unresolved questions and, on the other, to apply and extend the SM to complex and dynamically evolving system of nite size. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), with its high center of mass energy and the possibility to accelerate both nucleons and nuclei, will provide a deep insight into such topics, as well as a deeper understanding of the underlying physics. Among the four experiment at LHC, namely CMS, ATLAS, LHCb and ALICE, the latter is the only specically dedicated to the analysis of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collision. The focus is to study and understand how collective phenomena and macroscopic properties, involving many degrees of freedom, emerge from the microscopic laws of elementary-particle physics. The most striking case of collective bulk phenomenon predicted by the Standard Model, is the occurrence of phase transitions in quantum elds at characteristic energy densities. In particular, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) calculations foresee that at temperatures of about 170 MeV the ordinary hadronic matter, constituted by uncolored bound states of quarks, could undergo a transition to a new state of unbound quarks and gluons: the so called Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) [1] [2]. The study of phase transitions is of great interest not only in particle physics, but also in cosmology. According to Big-Bang theory, the Universe evolved from an initial state of extremely high energy density to its present state through a rapid expansion and cooling, thereby traversing the series of phase transitions predicted by the Standard Model. Global features of our Universe, like baryonantibaryon asymmetry or large scale structures (galaxy distribution), are believed to be linked to characteristic properties of such transitions.
CHAPTER 1. PHYSICS AT THE ALICE EXPERIMENT
As far as we know, the only way to create and study the primordial plasma in the laboratories is to collide two heavy nuclei and analyze the resulting small droplets of hot and dense medium. The system formed undergoes a fast dynamical evolution from the extreme initial conditions to the diluite nal hadronic state, making direct measurements impossible. In order to test the characteristics of the new state of matter it is necessary to use suitable probe. Among them, heavy quarkonium states such as J/ and play an important role as a test of deconnement.
Unfortunately, the probes are aected not only by the presence of the plasma, but also by other eects resulting from the use of the complex system of ordinary matter: the heavy ions. An understanding of such eects can only be achieved through precise studies of nucleon-nucleon and nucleon-nucleus collisions, which represent an essential part of the ALICE programme. In addition, the analysis of those collision holds an importance of its own as it will allow to extend the tests of the Standard Model to unexplored regions. From this point of view should be emphasized that, thanks to its unique design, ALICE is probably the LHC experiment best suited to acces to the low-pt region.
1.1
Heavy Ion Collisions (AA)
The focus of heavy-ion physics is to study and understand how collective phenomena and macroscopic properties, involving many degrees of freedom, emerge from the microscopic laws of elementary-particle physics. Specically, heavy-ion physics addresses these questions in the sector of strong interactions by studying nuclear matter under conditions of extreme density and temperature [3] [4]. The nucleon-nucleon center of mass energy for collisions of the heaviest ions at the LHC ( s= 5.5 Tev) will exceed that available at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) by a factor of about 30, opening up a new physics domain. Heavy-ion collisions at the LHC access not only a quantitatively dierent regime of much higher energy density, but also a qualitatively new regime, mainly because: A new range of Bjorken-x values, where strong nuclear gluon shadowing is foreseen, can be accessed. Hard processes are produced at suciently high rates for detailed measurements (quarkonia, open heavy avour). Weakly interacting hard probes become accessible, thus providing information about nuclear parton distributions at very high Q2 (jets). Parton dynamics dominate the reball expansion. All these features will allow an accurate study of the phase transition in the hot and dense hadronic matter environment.
1.1.1
The Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP)
The most striking case of a collective bulk phenomenon predicted by the Standard Model is the occurrence of phase transitions in quantum elds at characteristic energy densities. The generic form of the QCD phase diagram is shown in gure 1.1.
Figure 1.1: The phase diagram of QCD
Lattice calculations of Quantum Chromodynamics predicts that at a critical temperature of Tc 170 MeV, corresponding to an energy density of c 1 GeV/f m3 , nuclear matter undergoes a phase transition to a deconned state of quarks and gluons. In addition, at high temperature T and vanishing chemical potential B (quantity related to baryon-number density), chiral simmetry is approximately restored and quark masses are reduces from their large eective values in hadronic matter to their small bare ones. The basic mechanism for deconnement in dense matter is the Debye screening of the color charge. When the screening radius rD becomes less than the binding radius rH of the quark system (hadron), the conning force can no longer hold the quarks together and hence deconnement sets in. The phase transition can be well described by QCD thermodynamics, and in particular by nite temperature lattice calculations. However, the transition from hadronic matter to QGP can be illustrated by simple and intuitive arguments, based on the MIT bag model. This model describes the conned
state of matter as an ideal gas of non-interacting massless pions, with essentially three degrees of freedom. On the contrary, even a two avor Quark Gluon Plasma (composed by massless u and d quarks only), has 16 gluonic and 12 quark degrees of freedom. In the passage from a conned to a deconned state, the energy density, which is proportional to the degrees of freedom, undergoes a sudden enhancement (latent heat of deconnement). The behavior is shown in gure 1.2, obtained with lattice calculations.
Figure 1.2: Temperature dependance of the energy density over T 4 in QCD with 2 and 3 degenerate quark avors as well as with two light and a heavier (strange) quark. The arrow on the right-side ordinates show the value of the Stefan-Boltzmann limit for an ideal quark-gluon gas
At present the most convenient way to achieve the energy densities necessary for the QGP formation is through heavy ion collisions. The process that leads from the initial collision to hadronization and freeze-out, is described in gure 1.3. The main steps are (at LHC energies): pre-equilibrium (proper time < 1 fm/c): hard ( 0 fm/c) and soft ( 0.2 fm/c) processes occur during the parton scattering, leading to the creation of high-pT (jets, heavy quarks, photons) and low-pT particles, respectively; thermalization (possibly occurring at 1-2 fm/c): the multiple scat-
Figure 1.3: Expected evolution of a nuclear collision tering among the quark and gluon constituents of the colliding nucleons and the particles produced during the collisions lead to a rapid increase of entropy which could eventually result in thermalization; QGP formation ( 10-15 fm/c): at high energy densities the system reaches the deconnement phase with partonic and gluonic degrees of freedom; hadronization ( 20 fm/c): the temperature of the expanding medium drops down and, below the critical temperature Tc , the quarks and gluons becomes again conned into hadrons; freeze-out ( ): the expansion and the temperature fall lead rst to a reduction of the inelastic processes among hadrons, until the relative abundance of hadron species is xed (chemical freeze-out), and nally to the turn-o of any interaction which xes the kinematic spectra (kinetic freeze-out).
1.1.2
Experimental probes of QGP formation
The very short lasting time of QGP (only few 1023 s), together with the interdiction to detect free quarks, do not allow to directly measure the transition. Nevertheless, information are indirectly provided by series of probes, specically thought to test dierent aspects of the medium. The main classication of experimental probes relies on the dierence between hard probes (i.e. probes produced during the primary collisions, that are somehow sensitive to the nature of the medium they have to cross before being detected) and soft probes (probes produced during the evolution of the system, which reect the collective properties of the medium).
CHAPTER 1. PHYSICS AT THE ALICE EXPERIMENT Soft probes: ow and the equation of state
The phase transition to QGP, according to the models used, must imply a sudden change in the behaviour of quantities such as entropy, energy density and pressure as a function of thermodynamical variables such as the baryon chemical potential or the temperature. To monitor the equation of state, the above mentioned quantities must be inferred from measured quantities. The energy density, for example, can be estimated from an experimental quantity such as the total transverse energy per unit of rapidity of the particles produced in the collision. Information about the evolution of the system can be drawn from the kinematical spectra of particles: these can be tted according to hydrodynamic models, or integrated to get the total abundancies and relative ratios of particle species, which can be compared to thermal models of particle production to extract parameters such as T and B . The analysis of particle spectra also gives information about the collective motion of particles (ow), due to the expanding reball of nuclear matter created in the collision. In particular, due to the asymmetric shape of the reball in semicentral and peripheral collisions, the expansion is not isotropic and an elliptic ow due to the pressure gradients in the reball can be observed (CERN-SPS [5] ). Soft probes: strangeness enhancement The production of strange particles in a hadronic environment is strongly suppressed with respect to lighter avours, due to the higher mass of the s quark, which results in a higher production thresholds. In a deconned medium, strange quarks are abundantly produced via the gluon-gluon fusion process (ggs); subsequently, they survive until hadronisation occurs. This results s in a higher yield of strange hadrons such as (qss) and (sss), which can be taken as evidence for deconnement. Strangeness enhancement is observed already at SPS energies [6]: the yield per event obtained in Pb-Pb collisions is higher that what one would obtain from a simple superimposition of p-Pb collisions. Hard probes: high pT hadrons, jets and quarkonia suppression The presence of the medium aects the production of hadrons from initial parton scatterings. A parton crossing a coloured medium loses energy by means of two mechanisms: collisional energy loss due to scattering with other partons; radiative energy loss (gluonstrahlung). The dominant mechanism at high energies is the radiative one. A parton created in the hard collision, on a timescale short with respect to the evolution of the system (e.g. a heavy or high-pT quark) is slowed down by energy loss. This results in the quenching of the hadron spectrum at high-pT . The RHIC results are compatible with the hypothesis of surface emission, i.e. the only high-pT hadrons are those emitted from the peripheral regions of the
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reball, which do not have to cross the entire medium. More information can be obtained by analysing azimuthal correlations between the produced particles. When triggering on a high-pT particle, the azimuthal distribution of the other particles with respect to the triggered one should exhibit two peaks at 0 (near-side jet) and (away-side jet) radians, since, at least at Leading Order, partons pairs are produced back-to-back, and the hadron jets retain information about the direction of the initial parton from which they were originated via fragmentation. In a coloured medium, the high-pT particle is most probably emitted from the surface of the reball, so that the parton from which the away-side jet originates has to cross the whole medium: this results in a suppression of the away-side jet in central nucleus-nucleus collisions. The presence of a coloured medium aects also the bound states of heavy quarks (QQ): colour screening [7] of the binding potential by partonic matter results in quarkonia (J/ and ) suppression, as seen at RHIC [8].
1.2
Proton-Proton collisions (pp)
ALICE has several features that makes it an important contributor to protonproton physics at LHC. Its design allows particle identication over a broad momentum range, powerful tracking with good resolution from 100 MeV/c to 100 GeV/c, and excellent determination of secondary vertices. These, combined with a low material thickness and a low magnetic eld, will provide unique information about low-pT phenomena in pp collisions.
1.2.1
A benchmark for heavy ion physics
The identication of phenomena due to the formation of a new state of matter needs a good knowledge of ordinary nuclear matter eects, that can be achieved through comparison with pp collisions. A long list of observables have to be analyzed to this aim: Particle multiplicities: dierences in particle multiplicities between pp and AA are related to the features of parton distributions in the nucleon with respect to those in nuclei (shadowing) and to the onset of saturation phenomena occurring at small x. Slopes of transverse mass distributions: the comparison of slopes in AA collisions with those in pp allows to determine the collective eects, such as transverse ow, present in AA and absent in pp. Quarkonia (QQ) production in pp collision compared with the expected suppression in AA collisions; Ratios of momentum spectra: the ratios of transverse momentum spectra at suciently high momenta allow to discriminate between the dierent partonic energy losses of quarks and gluons. In particular, due to their dierent color representation, hard gluons are expected to loose approximatively a factor of two more energy than hard quarks.
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The dominant error for all these observables is often due to the systematics. In order to reduce it, it is thus of fundamental importance to measure the physical quantities in the same experimental setup, as it will be done in ALICE.
Chapter 2
The ALICE experiment

The ALICE experiment design [9] is driven by the requirements of tracking and identifying particles in a wide transverse momentum range ( from about 100 MeV/c up to about 100 GeV/c), of reconstructing short-lived particles such as hyperons (D and B mesons), of detecting quarkonia and of performing these tasks in an environment with large charged-particle multiplicities. These features are necessary to achieve a complete and detailed description of the events produced in heavy-ion collisions, from the hard scattering processes to the collective phenomena arising in a complex system.
2.1
Overview of the ALICE detectors
The ALICE detector [10][11] (gure 2.1) has the typical aspect of detectors at colliders, with a cylindrical shape around the beam axis, but with in addition a Forward Muon Spectrometer, detecting muons in a large pseudorapidity domain. Moreover, the central barrel angular acceptance is enhanced by detectors located at large rapidities, thus allowing measurements of low-pT particles and of global event structure. ALICE can be divided in three parts: 1. the central part, which covers 45o (corresponding to the pseudorapidity interval || 0.9) over the full azimuth and is embedded in a large magnet with a weak solenoidal eld (0.5 T). It consists (from the inside) of: an Inner Tracking System (ITS) a cylindrical Time Projection Chamber (TPC) a Transition-Radiation Detector (TRD) a large area Particle Identication (PID) array of Time Of Flight (TOF) counters an electromagnetic calorimeter (PHOS) an array of counters optimized for High-Momentum inclusive Particle Identication (HMPID) 2. the forward detectors, constituted of 12
CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT a Zero-Degree Calorimeter (ZDC) a Forward Multiplicity Detector (FMD) a Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD)
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3. the Forward Muon Spectrometer (FMS) which covers an angular acceptance of 2o <<9o The detectors of the central barrel are now considered. Inner Tracking System (ITS) The main purposes of the ITS are the detection of the primary and secondary vertices ( hyperons and charm) and the stand-alone track nding of low-pT charged particles, down to pT of 20 MeV/c for electrons. Moreover it can be used to improve the momentum resolution at high momenta, to reconstruct low energy particles and to identify them via energy loss,and, in the end, to dene the angles of the tracks for HBT interferometry analysis. The system consists of six cylindrical layer of position-sensitive detectors. The granularity required for the innermost planes, given the expected high multiplicity of charged particle tracks, can only be achieved with silicon micro-pattern detectors with true two-dimensional readout, such as Silicon Pixel Detectots (SPDs) and Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs). In particular silicon pixel detectors are used in the rst two layers, silicon drift detectors in the third and forth layers, while in the fth and sixth, where requirements in term of granularity are less stringent, strip detectors are adopted.
Time Projection Chamber (TPC) It is the main tracking detector of ALICE. Beyond track nding, it was specically designed for momentum measurement and particle identication by dE/dx. The mean momentum of the particles tracked in the TPC is around 500 MeV/c. Despite being a comparatively slow detector, with about 90 s drift time over the full length of 2.5 m, the TPC can cope with the minimum-bias collisions rate in PbPb of about 8 kHz, expected for the design luminosity L= 1027 cm2 s1 .
Transition-Radiation Detectors (TRD) The TRD detector lls the radial space between the TPC ans the TOF. It is constituted by a total of 540 detector modules, each consisting of a radiator and a multi-wire proportional readout chamber, together with its front-end electronic. The detector will provide electron identication for momenta greater than 1 GeV/c, where the pion rejection capability through energy-loss measurement in the TPC is no longer sucient. Such identication, in conjunction with ITS, will be used in order to measure open charm and open beauty,as well as light and heavy vector mesons produced in the collsions. Moreover, the combined use of TRD and ITS data will allow to separate the directly produced J/ mesons from those coming fromB decays.
CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT
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Figure 2.1: Layout of the ALICE experiment
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Particle Identication (PID) Particle identication (PID) over a large part of the phase space and for many dierent particles is an important design feature of ALICE. There are two detector systems dedicated exclusively to PID: a Time Of Flight (TOF) and a small system specialized on higher momenta. The TOF system is based on Multi-Gap Resistive-Plate Chambers (MRPC), with a resolution better than 100 ps. It will be used to separate pions from kaons in the momentum range 0.5 < p < 2 GeV/c, i.e. from the TPC upper limit for K / separation through dE/dx, to the statistics limit in single event. In addition it will be able to distinguish between electrons and pions in the range 140 < p < 200 Mev/c. The High Momentum Particle Identication (HMPID), which covers a limitated acceptance in the central barrel, was specically thought for hadron identication in the momentum region above 1.5-2 GeV/c. The dedicated detector was chosen to be a Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH), which provides a K/ and K/p separation up to 3.4 GeV/c and 5 GeV/c respectively.
Photon Spectrometer (PHOS) The PHOS is an electromagnetic calorimeter designed to search for direct photons, but it can also detect coming from 0 and decays at the highest momenta, where the momentum resolution is one order of magnitude better than for charged particles measured in the tracking detectors. The study of the high momentum particles spectrum is extremely useful because it gives information about the propagation of jets in the dense medium created during the collision (jet quenching). The calorimeter is placed at 4.6 m from the beam axis, covers the pseudorapidity and azimuthal region (|| 0.12, =100o ) and has an area of 8 m2 . Electromagnetic calorimetry will be performed over a wider portion of the phase space (|| 0.7, =110o ) by EMCal, a moderate resolution Pb-scintillator used to improve the ALICE performance in the detection of jets. This detector will be operated in conjunction with the tracking detectors (ITS+TPC) allowing simultaneous measurements of the neutral and charged components of the jets.
Magnet The last component of the central barrel is the magnet. The optimal choice for the experiment is a large solenoid with a weak eld. The choice of a weak and uniform solenoidal eld together with continuous tracking in a TPC eases considerably the task of pattern recognition. The eld strength of 0.5 T allows full tracking and particle identication down to 100 MeV/c in pT . Lower momenta are covered by the inner tracking system. The magnet of the L3 experiment fullls the requirements and, due to its large inner radius, can accomodate a single-arm electromagnetic calorimeter for prompt photon detection, which must be placed at a distance of 5 m from the vertex because of the particle density.
CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT The forward detectors are now considered.
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Zero-Degree Calorimeter (ZDC) The main aim of the ZDC is the estimate of the collision geometry through the measurement of the non-interacting beam nucleons (the spectators). There are four calorimeters, two for neutrons and two for protons, placed at 116 m from the interaction point, where the distance between beam pipes (8 cm) allows insertion of a detector. At this distance, spectator protons are spatially separated from neutrons from the magnetic elements of the LHC beam line. The neutron detectors are made up of a tungsten alloy, while the proton one is constituted of brass. Both calorimeters have quartz bers as the active material instead of the conventional scintillating ones.
Forward Multiplicity Detector (FMD) The purpose of the FMD is to measure dN/d in the rapidity region outside the central acceptance and to provide information for the trigger system in a very short time. The FMD is a silicon detector segmented into seven disks which surround the beam pipe at distances ranging from 42 to 225 cm from the vertex. Together they will cover the pseudorapidity range from -3.4 to -1.7 on the muon arm side and from 1.7 to 5.1 on the opposite hemisphere. It is designed in order to measure charged particle multiplicities from tens (in pp runs ) to thousands (in PbPb runs ) per unit of pseudorapidity.
Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD) The PMD is a preshower detector that measures the multiplicity and spatial ( - ) distribution of photons in order to provide estimates of the transverse electromagnetic energy and the reaction plane. It consists of two identical planes of proportional chambers with a 3X0 thick lead converter in between. It is installed at 350 cm from the interaction point, on the opposite side of the muon spectrometer, covering the region 2.33.5, in order to minimize the eect of upstream material such as the beam pipe and the structural component of TPC and ITS.
ALICE detector coordinate system As a conclusion of the detector overview, the ocially adopted coordinate system is provided. It is a right-handed orthogonal Cartesian system with the origin at the beam intersection point. The axis are dened as follow: x -axis is perpendicular to the mean beam direction, aligned with the local horizontal and pointing to the accelerator center; y-axis is perpendicular to the x -axis and to the mean beam direction, pointing upward; z -axis is parallel to the mean beam direction. Hence the positive z -axis is pointing in the direction opposite to the muon spectrometer.
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The ALICE oine framework: AliRoot To complete the description of ALICE experiment, the ALICE oine framework is presented in this paragraph. The project for the ALICE oine framework1 , AliRoot, started in 1998 and has been continuously developed by the oine core team and collaboration members. AliRoot is entirely based on Object Oriented technology (C++) and depends on the ROOT framework, which provides an environment for the development of software package for event generator, detector simulation, event reconstruction and data acquisition and analysis. The nal objectives of the AliRoot framework are: the simulation of the primary hadronic collisions and the resulting detector response; the reconstruction of the physics data (raw-data) coming from simulated and real events; the (distributed) analysis of reconstructed data. The AliRoot design was guided by the basic principles of re-usability and modularity, which minimize the amount of user code unused or rewritten and maximize the participation of the physicists in its development.A schematic picture of the framework layout is shown in Fig. 2.2: the core of the system in the STEER module, which provides steering,run management, interface classes and base classes.
Figure 2.2: Schematic view of the AliRoot framework The codes from the dierent detectors are independent so that dierent detectors groups can work concurrently on the system while minimizing the interference. The use of an Object Oriented programming language, allowing a dened class hierarchy, realizes the modularity structure in a natural way.
1A
framework is a set of software tools that enables data processing
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The hadronic collisions can be simulated with dierent Monte Carlo event generators,like, for example, PYTHIA and Hijing, which are interfaced to the framework in a completely transparent way to the users. The detector response simulation follows the same logic, allowing the user to switch among dierent transport packages like GEANT3, GEANT4 and FLUKA, without changing the code: only a dierent shared library has to be loaded. The role of the framework is shown schematically in Fig. 2.3. The left branch of the curve represent the simulation phase: the Monte Carlo truth is degraded to reproduced the detectors response. On the contrary, the right branch is the reconstruction phase: the real or simulated data are reconstructed in order to retrieve back the kinematics of the detected particles.
Figure 2.3: Data processing framework. The primary interactions are simulated via event generators and the resulting kinematic tree is then used in the transport package. The tree contains the produced particles, dened through a set of kinematic variables, such as momenta and energies, and keeps track of the production history (in term of mother-daughters relationship and production vertex).Each particle is then transported into the set of detectors: the point where the energy is deposited together with the amount of such energy constitutes an hit. The hits contains also information about the particle that generated them. At the next step the detector information is taken into account. The hits are dis-integrated: the information on the parent track is lost and the spatial position is translated into the corresponding detector readout element (e.g. strips, pads, etc.), thus generating the digits. There are two types of digits: the summable digits, where zero-thresholds are used and the results can be summed when dierent events are superimposed (event merging), and the digits, where real thresholds are used and the result is similar to what one would get in a real data taking. The digits are eventually converted in raw-data, which are stored in binary format as a payload. The reconstruction chain can then start, allowing the creation of track candidates. The nal output is an Event Summary Data (EDS), a root le containing all the output of the reconstruction. relevant for physics studies.
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2.2
The Muon Spectrometer
The Muon Spectrometer [12] (gure 2.4 and 2.5) was specically designed in order to detect heavy quarkonia in the muon pairs decay channel. As the primary interest is on (and ) resonances directly produced in the collision, it is important to measure J/ and at low pT , where the contribution from charmonia coming from B mesons decay is lower. Muon identication in the LHC heavy-ion collision environment is only feasible for muon momenta above 4 GeV, because of the amount of absorber material required to reduce the ux of hadrons. Hence the important measurement of low pT charmonium is possible only at small angles in the forward region, where the muons are Lorentz-boosted. Moreover, owing to the higher momenta of hadrons at forward rapidity and the corresponding lower decay probability, the background of decay muons is also reduced in the forward region. These are the reasons that led the design criteria of the detector. The angular acceptance of the muon spectrometer goes from 2o to 9o (2.5 < < 4)2 . Its mass resolution ( determined by angle and energy-loss uctuations in the front absorber, multiple scattering in the tracking chambers, spatial resolution, number and position of the tracking planes and the magnetic eld integrals of the muon magnet) is better than 100 MeV/c2 at around 10 GeV/c2 , sucient to separate all resonance states. The detector consists of a composite absorber starting 90 cm from the vertex,a large dipole magnet with 3 Tm eld integral placed outside the L3 magnet, and 10 planes of thin, high-granularity tracking stations. The picture is completed by a second absorber, made of iron and acting as a muon lter, and four more detector planes, used for triggering. The spectrometer is shielded throughout its length by a dense absorber tube, of about 60 cm outer diameter, which surrounds the pipe. Besides the heavy quarkonia detection, the ALICE spectrometer will provide a spectrum of the meson,and, alone or in conjunction with TRD, will be able to study the heavy avour production in the region -2.5 < < -1, owing to the measurement of the e - coincidences.
2.2.1
Absorbers
The muon arm contains three absorber sections: the front absorber in the acceptance region ( 10 int ); the beam shield surrouding the beam pipe; the muon lter between the tracking and trigger chambers ( 7.2 int of iron)
2 In fact, in the ALICE coordinate system the muon spectrometer angular acceptance is 171o < < 178o , corresponding to a pseudorapidity of -4 < < -2.5. However, in the analysis, for reason of convenience, a polar coordinate system where the z-axis points toward the muon spectrometer will be adopted
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Figure 2.4: Schematic 3D view of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer
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Figure 2.5: Schematic side view of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer
The front absorber (gure 2.6 total length of 4.13 m ) has the double task of attenuating the particleux into the Muon Spectrometer by at least two orders of magnitude and of decreasing the muon background by limiting the free path for primary , K decays. The minimal distance to the interaction point (90 cm) is imposed by the dimension of the inner tracker and the position of the multiplicity counters. The front section consists of dense low-Z materials to limit multiple scattering, while the rear one contains alternating layers of neutron moderator/absorber and high-Z material to shield against neutrons and photons. The use of a very dense material at the end of the absorber has an important consequence for the tracking. Since the multiple scattering in this layer is large, whereas the distance to the rst tracking chamber is small, the muon production angle is best dened by combining the position measurement in the rst chamber with the position of the interaction vertex, determined by the inner tracking system. Outside the muon arm acceptance, a tungsten cone at < 2o absorbs particles emanating from the beam pipe, and lead is employed at > 10o to reduce the particle load in the TPC. The small-angle beam shield consists of dense materials encased in a 4 cm thick stainless steel tube. Its outer envelope is pencil shaped, i.e. it follows an angle of 2o until it reaches an outer radius of 30 cm and then stays constant up to the end of the spectrometer. This operates in such a way to prevent acceptance losses by taking into account the bending of tracks in the dipole eld.
The muon lter consists of a 5.65.61.2 m3 iron wall, located at z = 15 m between the last tracking and the rst triggering plane. The hit rate in the
22
trigger chambers is mainly due to surface emissions of soft particles from the beam shield and the backside of the muon lter.
Figure 2.6: Front Absorber
2.2.2
Dipole Magnet
The size and bending strength of the muon spectrometer magnet are dened by the requirements on mass resolution and geometrical acceptance. The magnet has to cover the pseudorapidity range 2.5 < < 4, corresponding to an angular acceptance of 2o < < 9o . Given the requirements on size (a 56.68.6 m3 box is enough to satisfy the angular coverage) and magnetic eld ( Bnom 0.7 T), it is not necessary to use a superconducting magnet. It was therefore chosen a window-frame warm magnet equipped with resistive coils and arranged so as to produce a magnetic eld in the horizontal direction, along the x -axis. With its integral magnetic eld of 3 Tm, the dipole will be able to bend the muons along the y-axis and will allow a mass resolution better than 100 MeV/c2 for dimuon masses of about 10 GeV/c2 , enough to separate the bottomonium states. The magnet is be placed close to the ALICE L3 magnet.
2.2.3
Tracking Chambers System
The Tracking system covers an area of about 100 m2 . It is composed of ve stations of two detection planes each, located (distances are given from the Interaction Point IP) before (5.4 and 6.4 m), inside (9.8 m) and after (12.9 and 14 m) the dipole magnet. To achieve the desired mass resolution, a momentum resolution p/p < 1% is needed, i.e. a spatial resolution of 100 m in the bending plane and 1 mm in the non-bending plane. Moreover, the tracking chambers are required to tolerate a high hit density expected in heavy-ion collisions ( 5102 cm2 for the most exposed detectors, located in the rst station).
23
The above requirements are met by Multiwire Proportional Chambers with segmented cathode planes ( Chatode Pad Chambers, CPC), lled with an Ar/CO2 (80% / 20%) gas mixture. Each CPC is read on both cathodes, providing two-dimensional spatial information. To keep the occupancy at a 5% level, a very ne segmentation is needed: pads near the beam pipe in the rst station are as small as 4.26 mm2 . The total number of read-out channels is about 1 million. The chambers in station 1 and 2 have a quadrant geometry (Fig. 2.7(a) ), with read-out electronics on the surface, while those in stations 3 to 5 have a slat geometry (Fig. 2.7(b) ) and read-out electronics on the sides.
Figure 2.7: The Tracking Chambers of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer: a quadrant (a) and a slat (b). In order to minimise multiple scattering of the muons, the materials in the tracking system are composite materials such as carbon bre, so that the total thickness of a chamber is 0.03 X0 . Given the strict spatial resolution requirements, the position of the chambers is optically monitored by a Global Monitoring System GMS (Fig. 2.6) within a 20 m accuracy. The Front-End electronics for all stations is based on a 16-channel chip ( Multiplexed ANAlogic Signal, MANAS). Four of these chips are mounted on a front-end MANAS Numerical card (MANU), equipped with a 12-bit ADC and read-out by the Muon Arm Read-Out Chip (MARC) with zero suppression. Data from the MANU are collected and transferred to the DAQ within 240 s after the trigger signal.
2.2.4
The ALICE Muon Trigger System
The goal of the Muon Trigger System is to select unlike-sign muon pairs from the decay of resonances, like sign muon pairs for combinatorial background studies and single muons from open heavy avours. The expected collision rate in Pb-Pb at nominal luminosity is about 8kHz. The trigger rate that can be tolerate by the DAQ system is of the order of 1 kHz. In central Pb-Pb collisions, about eight muons from and K decays are emitted
24
Figure 2.8: General view of the GMS setup: the red lines in the gure represent the optical lines. per event in the muon spectrometer acceptance. The pT distribution of these background muons is peaked at low transverse momenta,as shown in Fig. 2.9.
Figure 2.9: Average number of muons per central Pb-Pb collision with pT >pmin T emitted in 2.5<< 4 as a function of pmin . T To minimise the probability of triggering on background muons, a pT cut must be applied on the muons. A single-muon trigger is issued when at least one muon with transverse momentum above the pT cut is identied by the trigger system, while a dimuon trigger is issued when at least two muons are above the same pT threshold. For this purpose, a large-area trigger system based on position sensitive detectors with a resolution of the order of the cm is needed: this is realised by means of Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC).
25
Design The trigger system is based on two trigger station (Fig 2.10 (a) ), located 16.1 m (MT1) and 17.1 m (MT2) away from the IP.
Figure 2.10: Schematic 3D view of the ALICE Muon Trigger System (a); detector composition of a half-plane of the ALICE Muon Trigger System (b).
Figure 2.11: Strip segmentation of the detectors in the ALICE Muon Trigger System.
26
Each station is composed of two detection planes of 18 single-gap RPCs each, so that the total number of RPCs is 72. More details about the detectors will be given in the next chapter (Chapter 3). RPCs are read-out on both sides with copper strips: the horizontal strips (X) measure the coordinate along the y direction (bending plane), while the vertical strips (Y) measure the coordinate along the x direction (non-bending plane). The total number of channels is about 21000. Each half plane is composed of RPC modules of three kinds: Long,Cut and Short (L,C,S as shown in Fig. 2.10(b) ), with dierent size, shape and strip segmentation; L-type detectors come in three dierent segmentations ( Fig. 2.11 ). The shape and size of the C and S detectors is driven by the need to allow a central hole for the beam pipe. In order to ensure a at occupancy throughout the plane surface, the pitch and length of the strips increase with the distance from the beam pipe, approximately in the same proportion as the hit-rate per surface unit decreases. The pitch of the strips is also conditioned by the momentum resolution required for the pT cut: X strips have widths ranging from about 1 cm (near to the beam pipe) to about 4 cm (in the most peripheral regions), while Y strips only have widths of 2 and 4 cm, since the resolution requirements in the non-bending plane are less stringent. The strip segmentation of all types of detectors is shown in Fig. 2.11. The strips are arranged in projective geometry, i.e. the strip pitches in the four detection planes scale with the distance of the plane from the IP. Similarly, the area of the detectors is larger in MT2 than in MT1.
Figure 2.12: The ALICE Muon Trigger System Trigger principle According to simulation studies, two dierent pT cuts have been dined, which represent a compromise between eciency and background rejection: a low pT cut (1 GeV/c) optimised forJ/ detection and a high pT cut (2 GeV/c) optimised for detection. The pT cut is implemented according to the following
27
method illustrated in Fig. 2.13: a muon created at the IP is bent by the dipole eld and res the trigger stations MT1 and MT2 in the position (x1 ,y1 ,z1 ) and (x2 ,y2 ,z2 ). The deviation induced along the y direction by the dipole magnet is dened as y2 =y2 -y2, where y2, is the position in which a muon with innite momentum crossing MT1 in y1 would re MT2. If the deviation due to the magnetic eld is less than 10o , y2 can be written in terms of the muon pT with reasonable approximation as: y2 =(z2 -z1 ) eBL (RF /pT ) z1 where B is the magnetic eld, L is the dipole length and RF is the estimated radial position of the muon at the dipole mid-plane. It is thus clear how, at least at rst order, a cut on y2 corresponds to a cut on pT . Moreover, positive and negative muons can be distinguished according to the sign of the deviation. The y2 values, corresponding to the pT cut to be applied, have been computed (in units of strips) and stored in look-up tables; these are compared by the trigger electronics to the measured deviation. The x coordinate information is used to check that the tracks point back to the IP, providing an eective tool for background rejection. When one of the two planes in MT1 is red, a road is open, i.e. a set of strips that should be red in the other three planes if the track is coming from the IP. If three out of the four planes have counted a hit belonging to that road, the track is processed and the pT estimated. As already mentioned, depending on the present trigger mode, the trigger signal is issued if there are two unlike sign tracks, or two like sign tracks, or a single track, with momentum above the pT cut. The choice of a 3/4 condition accounts for possible detector ineciencies or dead channels. The Trigger Electronics The Trigger Electronics has three main components: the Front End Electronics (FEE); the local trigger electronics; the regional and global trigger electronics. The track selection is performed by the trigger electronics which has to collect the information from the FEE on the RPCs whose signals are only discriminated and do not need an amplication. The RPCs are equipped with the ADULT front-end electronics [14] [15], which employs an original dual threshold technique to improve the timing performances of the detectors in streamer mode, as it will be explained in the next chapter. Thus the time resolution of 1 2 ns, needed for the identication of the bunch crossing ( each 25 ns in p-p ), is reached. The general architecture of the trigger system is shown in Fig 2.14. The local trigger electronics (243 VME boards hosted in 16 crates placed close
28
Figure 2.13: The ALICE Muon Trigger principle: projection in the bending (yz) plane.
Figure 2.14: Overview of the trigger system. to the trigger stations) receives digital signals, in the form of bit patterns, from the front-end electronics to perform the trigger algorithm delivering a local L0 trigger in case of single tracks above low and high-pT threshold.The response time is 250 ns. The local trigger information is then sent to the regional trigger boards (one for each of the above mentioned crates), hence to the global trigger electronics which issues either the single muon or the (un)like-sign muon pair signal. The total latency of the muon trigger is about 700 ns (including cable delays), small enough to enter the general ALICE L0 trigger.
Chapter 3
RPCs for the ALICE Muon Trigger

The Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) are gaseous detector designed to measure the time and position of charged particles crossing its active area, that is the gas volume.
Figure 3.1: Structure of a single-gap Resistive Plate Chamber The typical structure of a single-gap RPC is presented in Fig. 3.1: the 2mm thick gas gap (the active volume) is enclosed between two parallel bakelite plates (2 mm thick) treated with linseed oil to smooth the surface. The electrodes (with a typical resistivity ranging from 109 1011 /cm) are separated by a frame and by spacers of insulating material; the spacers, 10 mm diameter cylinders with a 2 mm height, are placed on a 1010 cm2 grid. The external side of the electrodes are covered with a thin graphite layer to ensure a uniform electric eld all over the active volume; a foil of insulating material (PET) is glued on the conductive layer. One electrode is connected to the HV and the other one to the ground. The 29
CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER
30
signal produced in the gap by a charged particle is picked-up by two orthogonal strip planes placed on the external side of the electrodes. Two external stiener planes ensure the rigidity of the complex.
3.1
Requirements for the ALICE Muon RPCs
The characteristics of the RPCs of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer reect the requirements for operation in both heavy ions and proton-proton runs. These are: a high eciency up to particle hit rates of the order of 100 Hz/cm2 , plus a good safety margin; a spatial resolution of the order of centimeter and a cluster-size as possible to 1 to provide a highly selective trigger;
1
as close
a time resolution ( 1-2 ns ) much smaller than the interval between bunch crossings (25 ns), to make sure that all muons produced in a given collision are correctly assigned to the same bunch crossing; a detector lifetime compatible with the LHC A-A and p-p program; read-out granularity to cope with the expected hit density ( in term of occupancy in both A-A and p-p program); need to cover a large detection area ( a scintillator array would be too expensive ) Lets now describe the RPC design and working principles.
3.2
RPC design and working principle
The main dierence between the RPC and a traditional gaseous counter is the resistive material out of which the electrodes are made. As explained before, these are connected to the High Voltage and to ground by a layer of conductive material applied on their outer surface, and kept at a constant distance between them by plastic spacers inside the gas gap. The detector is lled with gas at about room pressure, which ushes through the gap by means of an inlet and an outlet pipe. The voltages required for operation are of the order of 45 kV/mm. Since the electrode is resistive, the signal can be picked up inductively by means of conductive strips, electrically insulated from the electrodes.The strips have a width of the order of the cm (it depends on the position in Trigger Station),and, together with their ground plate, behave as transmission lines with a characteristic impedance around 50 . To avoid reection of the signal, the strips and the ground planes are connected at one end with a 50 resistor.
1 The
cluster-size is the number of contiguous strips red by a crossing particle.
31
3.2.1
Signal formation process and gas mixture
The RPC signal formation process is the typical one of gaseous detectors.When a charged particle passes through the gas volume, it interacts with the gas molecules: if they receive an energy high enough to be ionized, electron-ion pairs are created. Due to the electric eld applied between the electrodes, electrons migrates toward the anode and acquire the energy: U = e E l where eE is the electric force and l the path of the charge between two collisions in the electric eld direction. If electrons have an energy greater than the ionization energy of the gas for l < (with mean free path), collisions with gas molecules can determine their ionization and the creation of new electron-ion pairs, starting a multiplication process that can produce an avalanche. According to the Townsend mechanism, if the electric eld is constant, the multiplication increases exponentially and the number n(x) of electrons that reaches the anode will be n(x) =n0 ex where n0 is the number of primary electrons, x the distance between the origin of the primary electrons and the anode and is the rst Townsend coecient. The coecient depends on the gas used and on the E/p ratio between the electric eld and the gas pressure. From the two previous equations, we can deduce that the multiplication process can be favored incresing the electric eld, decreasing the gas density ( that means increasing the mean free path) and using monoatomic gases in the mixture, such as noble gas, because they have an value greater than the one of multiatomic gases. This can be explained by the fact that if the gas is multiatomic the energy transmitted to the molecule can also be dissipated through other channels (dissociation, excitation of vibrational or rotational states) without formation of ions. One of the widely used noble gas is Argon, with a ionization energy of I = 15.8 eV. Due to the small thermal and drift speeds, ions stay near the point where they have been produced; since both speeds are higher for the electrons, they drift along the electric eld lines and spread also along the other directions.Therefore the avalanche assumes the shape of a drop, with the electrons concentrated in the region with the largest radius as shown in Fig. 3.2. The multiplication process follows the equation n(x) = n0 ex only if the eld generated into the drop by the charge separation, ECE , is small with respect to the external electric eld, E0 (see Fig. 3.3). This condition is satised when the multiplication factor M, dened as M = n / n0 , is lower than 108 , while for higher values of M the avalanche grows so that the applied electric eld is no longer homogeneous; when ECE becomes equal to E0 electrons and ions recombine with emission of ionizing photons (Fig. 3.2(b)). At the extremities of the drop, where the eld is higher, these photons start secondary avalanches that trigger a discharge between the electrodes, called streamer (Fig. 3.2(c)). We can dene a discharge as a continuous current owing (even for a very short time)from an electrode to the other. The threshold for the degeneration of the avalanche in streamer is the Raether condition:
CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER M 108 = xc 20
32
where xc is the length of the critical drift path. In a RPC the maximum possible value of xc is given by the gap length: this means that to work in streamer mode with a 2 mm gap, the rst Townsend coecient has to be of the order of 10 mm1 . If the electric eld or the drift path are slightly smaller than the one required to fulll the Raether condition, the spark may occur, but with a delay. This happens when electrons are extracted from the chatode by ultraviolet rays (generated from electron-ion recombination and from ion dis-excitation) or by positive ions approaching the electrode. The ultraviolet photons can initiate secondary avalanches also in zones of the detector near to the passage of the particle, thus increasing the noise as well as the cluster size, that is the number of contiguous strips red by the crossing particle. To reduce these eects, polyatomic molecules, such as isobutane, are added to the gas mixture for two reasons: rst, they can absorb ultraviolet rays and dissipate their energy in mechanic channels; second, if their ionization potential is lower than the one of the noble gas, they can receive the charge of positive ions and neutralize it at the cathode without extracting electrons. In this way the discharge is quenched. Ultraviolet rays are also absorbed by the linseed oil layer which is on the gas side of the RPC electrodes. The reduction of secondary processes is also favored by the addition of electronegative gases, such as freon or SF6 . In fact, a free electron can be captured by a molecule of these gases giving birth to a negative ion that can be neutralized interacting with an ion of opposite sign. The result of the process is the loss of an electron-ion pair but also a reduction of the lateral extension of the spark. Recombination of negative ions with positive ions can occur without emission of ultraviolet photons because the disexcitation can be achieved through mechanic channels. Moreover, negative ions have a much smaller drift velocity and therefore do not contribute to the fast signal. In particular, SF6 quenches the spark thanks to its electron anity value of 1.050.10 eV, but above all thanks to its electron attachment cross section that is a strongly decreasing function of the electric eld. Therefore, when the space charge eld reduces the applied one, the attachment becomes very eective and negative ions are created. The charge released by the spark neutralizes the voltage applied on the electrodes in a limited area of them: the recovery time of the charge and consequently of the working potential, depends on the electrode resistivity. In RPCs the ion drift does not induce uselfull signals, because it is distributed over a time interval much longer with respect to the electron-induced pulses. Only the electrons contribute to the signal picked up by the readout strips, and it is possible to show that the charge induced on the strips is only a fraction of the total charge dissipated in the gas. Depending on the gas mixture components and their percentage and on the voltage applied to the electrodes, the RPCs can be operated in avalanche or streamer mode; details will be presented in the next Sections.
33
Figure 3.2: Shape of the avalanche (a) and evolution of the avalanche to the streamer (b,c)
34
Figure 3.3: Electric eld in presence of a big avalanche. E0 is the eld applied to the electrodes; Ea is the charge eld; Ec is the avalanche-cathode eld.
35
3.2.2
RPC Working Parameters
Eciency The eciency of a RPC reaches its maximum value when the applied voltage is high enough for the charge multiplication process to develop and give rise to a signal higher than the preset threshold (in streamer mode the start of a discharge is also required). The eciency-HV curve of a properly working RPC should present a steep rise (in a few hundreds of Volts) up to what is called the knee, i.e. a change in the slope, after which the eciency remains constant.This last part of the curve is commonly referred to as a plateau. The eciency curve moves rigidly towards higher voltage values when increasing the discrimination threshold. The voltage is not the only parameter aecting the detector eciency. The eect of temperature and pressure can be understood by recalling that the multiplication process starts when the energy eE acquired in a mean free path by primary electrons accelerated in the electric eld E is enough to ionise an atom: eE = e V > I d (1)
where V is the applied voltage, d is the length of the gas gap and I is the energy required to ionise atoms in the gas. The mean free path can be written ( with some approximation) as: =1/N =(k/V) T p (2)
where is the electron-atom cross section, N is the atom density of the gas, k is the Boltzmann constant and V is the gas volume. The second equality holds if one uses the equation of state of ideal gases to express the atom density N. The condition, in equation (2) is thus found to depend on the quantity VT/p. To take into account the temperature and pressure dependance of eciency, an eective voltage can be dened: Vef f = V
T p (p0 /T0 )
(3)
where p0 and T0 are reference values at which the applied and eective voltages coincide, and temperature are expressed in K. At room conditions and voltages around 8kV, a 5o temperature variation results in an eective voltage variation of about 150V. The same eect corresponds to a 20 mbar pressure variation. For these reasons, HV power supply systems for RPC operate together with a temperature and pressure monitor, so that the applied voltage can be varied online, in order to keep the eective voltage constant. The maximum eciency reached by the detector is usually slightly lower than 100%, due to the spacers, which limit the active volume. In some cases, an additional source of local ineciency in a RPC is the non-perfect parallelism between electrodes, resulting in regions where the gas gap is wider and the electric eld is lower. Time resolution In a conventional cylindrical counter, the electric eld scales with the inverse of
36
the distance from the anode wire: only in a limited region near to the anode the electric eld is high enough for the multiplication process to start. Consequently, the main source of time uncertainty is represented by the uctuations in the drift time of electrons to the multiplication region. In a detector with parallel plates the electric eld is uniform and critical everywhere: there is no drift region and the spread of the signal arrival time is smaller. The time resolution of RPCs is better in avalanche mode as we wil see later. Spatial resolution and cluster size The spatial resolution of a RPC is of the order of w/ 12, where w is the strip width. Such value can be modied by cluster size eects, i.e. by the number of adjacent strips on which, in one same event, a signal above the discrimination threshold is induced. The cluster size depends on the size of the avalanche (or of the streamer), which in turn can be aected by the quenching properties of the gas mixture. The typical cluster size of RPCs in streamer mode is about 1.5 with strips 1 cm wide. It has to be pointed out that a properly working RPC will count a number of events with cluster size 2, those when the particle impact coordinate is in between two adjacent strips: in this cases, the spatial resolution is better than w/ 12 since the particle coordinate is better constrained. An excess of events with cluster size 2, though, usually reects a large discharge transverse size and it is an indicator of poor quenching properties of the gas mixture. Finally, an important role is played by the surface resistivity of the electrodes and of the conductive layer on them, since this inuences the propagation of the electric signal. The conductive layer is usually made out of graphite with typical resistivity of the order of 109 1011 /cm. The streamer mode operation is best suited for applications in which an optimal spatial resolution is required. While the pulse amplitude spectrum of the streamer mode presents a narrow peak around a mean value, the pulse amplitude spectrum of the avalanche mode decrease exponentially ,so that a relatively low threshold must be adopted in order not to lose the low amplitude signals.For this reason, in case of large avalanches hitting one strip, the signal induced on the neighbouring strips will most probably be above the threshold as well. Noise rate The RPCs have low sensitivity to background neutrons and . Thus, the main background source of RPCs is the noise due to intrinsic detector eects, such as imperfections in the electrode surface: if this is not smooth enough, the electric eld will be locally higher due to spike eect, leading to extraction of electrons from the cathode, which cross the whole gas gap generating an unwanted discharge. The prevention of such discharges is important not only for the purpose of reducing the background, but also in term of the rate capability and ageing of the detector. For this reason, the inner surface of the electrodes is coated with a linseed oil layer, to ensure a smooth surface. Other sources of unwanted counts may be the trasmission through the conductive strips of external electromagnetic signals (this can be partially avoided by enclosing the RPC in an external metallic structure at ground voltage, which acts as a Faraday cage), or cross-talk phenomena. The lower amplitude of the avalanche signal and the consequent need to set lower thresholds results in a higher noise rate in avalanche mode with respect
CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER to the streamer mode.
37
Current The current circulating between the electrodes is an important parameter to be monitored during the detector operation. In case of perfect insulation of the electrodes, there is no ohmic current and the only charge motion is that of the free charges liberated in the gas by ionising particles or electrons extracted from the cathode. The current drawn by the detector when it is not irradiated is commonly referred to as dark current ( but of course most dark current measurements also include the contribution from cosmic ray-induced signals). An ohmic (leakage) current may however circulate in case of bad insulation of the electrodes from one another or from the external structure. Leakage current can be measured at low voltages when the contribution from liberated charges in the gas is not important yet. Rate capability A streamer signal deposits on the electrodes an average charge of about 500 pC. This causes a diminution of the electric eld in the region where the signal was generated, making the detector temporarily inecient in that region. If the relaxation time of the electrodes is larger than the time interval between two consecutive hits in the same region, this will aect the detector eciency. With some approximation, the RPC can be assumed to behave locally like an RC circuit. Using this simple model it can be calculated that th relaxation time is : = RC =
r o (1
+ 2/ r )
The rate capability of RPCs should depend, according to this model, on the gas mixture dieletric constant ( r ) and the resistivity () of the electrodes. It has to be underline that, in avalanche mode, the rate capability is much better than in streamer mode ( with the same values of r and ) due to the lower charge deposit on the electrodes with avalanche signals. Ageing The performances of a RPC can suer from long-term operation. Due to the exposure of the detector at high hit rates, chemical reactions may occur in the gas, leading to the formation of substances not included in the original mixture. These may react with the electrodes, causing alteration of its surface. Such reactions might as well alter the quenching and/or ionising properties of the mixture. Moreover, continuous discharges in the detector as well as chemical reactions may cause the detachment of linseed oil from the electrode. The chemical reactions in the gas are connected with the presence in the gas of energetic electrons which, on a probabilistic basis, can break the molecular bonds of gases in the mixture, linseed oil and electrode plates. For this reason, the age of a detector is assumed to be proportional to the current per surface unit which was drawn by the detector during its operation period. If the charge deposited on the electrodes at every hit is assumed to be known, ageing can be quantied with the time-integrated rate (hits/cm2 ). Another ageing eect, complementary to those described above, is connected to ushing the detector with a dry (i.e. water-vapour free) mixture: this results
38
in the diusion of H2 O molecules from the bakelite plate to the mixture. The consequent decrease of the bakelite water content causes an increase of the resistivity and, possibly, mechanical alterations of the electrodes. Such eect can be partially avoided by ushing the detector with a wet mixture containing water vapour. The most common symptom of ageing in a RPC is the increase of the current and/or hit rate after a certain period of operation: this is most probably due to the deterioration of the surface and can eventually lead to the loss of eciency.To study all these problems, ageing tests have been performed at CERN GIF (Gamma Irradiation Facility) on RPC (5050 cm2 ) prototypes [16].
3.3
Gas mixtures: avalanche vs streamer
The mixtures in the rst RPCs only included Ar as a multiplier (given its high Townsend coecient) and organic gases as quenchers. Later, electronegative gases such as freon began to be employed, with the aim of limiting the discharge size. When the research and development focused on the rate capability of the detector, strongly quenched mixtures began to be used with the aim of reducing the charge deposited on the electrodes at each hit. In the context of studies concerning the rate capability, an analysis on the pulse shape of a detector operated with Argon, freon and isobutane (C4 H10 ) revealed an interesting feature: the streamer signal (whose amplitude is of order of 100 mV) is always preceded by a small signal, of the order of a few mV [14]. Such signal can be identied with the arrival at the anode of the avalanche formed by primary and secondary electrons originated during the ionisation and multiplication process. Afterwards, UV photons emitted from ion-electron recombination, together with electrons extracted from the cathode by photons or ions, further ionise the gas and more avalanches form, until a spark eventually occurs and the streamer signal is generated. As it can be noticed by comparing Figs. 3.4 (a) and 3.4 (b), the timing of the avalanche signal is much more precise. This can be explained by the straightforward (somewhat deterministic) nature of the multiplication process; the formation of a spark is instead a stochastic event, with a larger time-jitter. It has also been observed that when increasing the high voltage the streamer signal occurs earlier and eventually superimposes to the avalanche one, while when decreasing the voltage below some critical value the streamer signal is not observed. The transition between the avalanche and streamer regimes has these features: the avalanche signal is always present and is approximately proportional to the charge liberated during the primary ionisation, while the streamer signal appears above a critical voltage, following the avalanche with a delay varying from event to event. Therefore, it is possible to work in avalanche mode, obtaining a better time resolution and a smaller charge deposited on the electrodes (of the order of pC). The price to pay, together with the eects of the avalanche pulse spectrum on spatial resolution and noise rate, is the amplication by external electronics required to obtain signals that can be discriminated with conventional electronics. From an operative point of view, the dierence between the streamer and
39
Figure 3.4: A few typical streamer (a) and avalanche (b) pulses observed with an oscilloscope connected to the anode of a RPC with a 50 termination.Note the dierent voltage scale in the two plots. avalanche modes lies in the gas mixture and in the High Voltage applied: avalanche mixtures employ a larger amount of quenchers, preventing the signal to degenerate into a streamer. For the same reason, argon is often substituted with C2 H2 F4 , an organic gas that, though easily ionised, exhibits quenching properties. Even in avalanche mode, a certain fraction of signals degenerate inot a streamer. The addition of SF6 (a strongly electronegative gas) can reduce this eect, so that almost streamer-free mixtures can be obtained. Finally, the main advantages of streamer and avalanche operation are listed below Streamer Operation Mode - Spatial resolution - No amplication needed - Lower noise rate Avalanche Operation Mode - Time Resolution - Rate capability - Slower ageing
40
3.4
Characteristics of the ALICE Muon RPCs
From the facts presented in the previous sections, it emerges how the selection of the operating mode and of other characteristics of Resistive Plate Chambers must be performed on the bases of the specic requirements that must be fullled. After an intense R&D stage, the ALICE collaboration chose to use standard single-gap RPCs with low resistivity (for eciency and rate capability reasons 109 cm was the choice adopted) bakelite electrodes 2 mm thick, and a 2 mm gas gap. The gas mixture used will be dierent for A-A and p-p collisions. In A-A collisions, where the spatial resolution requirements are more stringent, a wet low-gain streamer mixture will be used, made out of: 50.5%Ar 41.3%C2 H2 F4 7.2% C4 H10 1% SF6
while in p-p collisions, where the main concern is the detector life time in the expected high irradiation conditions,a wet, highly-saturated avalanche mixture has been chosen, made out of: 89.7%C2 H2 F4 10% C4 H10 0.3% SF6
Time Resolution and ADULT: A DUaL-Threshold discrimination technique To get the RPC signal in a 20 ns wide gate, given by the LHC clock, it is required an intrinsic time resolution of 1-2 ns since other variables such as channel-by-channel spread in the delay adjustment and cable length also contribute to the time distribution of the signals. As it was explained before, the time resolution of RPCs operated in avalanche mode (about 1 ns) is better than the one obtained in streamer mode due to the shape of RPC pulse in this operation mode. It fact the streamer pulse shows a complex structure, namely it consists of: a rst signal called precursor and due to the avalanche (see Fig. 3.5, bottom), with typical amplitude of 20-40 mV, rise time of 2 ns and width of 5 ns, which is xed in time relatively to the particle passage through the chamber; a second signal, due to the streamer, which may be delayed from the precursor by a time (typically of the order of several nanosecond) whose mean value depends on the applied voltage on the RPC and which shows non negligible event-by-event time jitter. To obtain a small time jitter in streamer mode, one has to raise the high voltage well above the knee of the eciency curve, with possible negative eects on the ageing of the detector. Otherwise we should lower the discrimination thresholds so to detect the precursor signal, but this would increase the single rate as well as the cluster size.
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Therefore, to improve the time resolution of RPCs in streamer mode, a dual threshold discrimination method was developed (ADULT, A DUaL Threshold [14] [15]).
Figure 3.5: Typical pulse picked-up on a RPC operated in streamer mode, with a digital oscilloscope (1 GHz bandwidth) via a short BNC cable (50 impedance) The ADULT technique aims at exploiting both the properties of the avalanche precursor and the large amplitude of the streamer signal. This is realised by means of the coincidence between two discriminators: the rst one has a low threshold (10mV), compatible with the avalanche signal, while the second has a high threshold (80mV), to conrm the streamer signal formation. The two out-coming signals, with the low threshold one delayed by 15 ns, are sent to a coincidence. In this way, the time reference is given by the avalanche precursor and eciency, cluster size and single rate depend on the streamer signal which is well above the noise.Such a technique reduces drastically the time jitter, so that a resolution of about 1 ns can be achieved at reasonable voltage values. The ADULT method has been successfully implemented on the front-end electronics chip of the RPCs for the ALICE Muon Trigger (Fig. 3.6)
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Figure 3.6: The ADULT Front-End chip for the RPCs of the ALICE Muon Trigger
3.4.1
Nucleus-Nucleus collisions
ALICE is the only experiment at LHC dedicated to the study of the heavy-ion collisions, so that the RPCs have been optimized to cope with the constrain given by physic in such collisions. The maximum expected rate on the trigger planes will be of the order of 25 Hz/cm2 in Ar-Ar collisions while in Pb-Pb it is about 3 Hz/cm2 . These rates can be tolerate in streamer mode; in addition, the high signal to background ratio of a streamer gas mixture allow to achieve a cluster size value and an occupancy lower than the ones obtained working in avalanche mode, thus providing a high trigger selectivity as needed.
3.4.2
Proton-Proton collisions
The ALICE data taking scenario in proton-proton collisions is rather dierent than in A-A collisions. There are two main reasons that lead to the choice of the operation in highly-saturated avalanche mode for p-p collisions: the expected muon trigger rate is much lower:the momentum resolution requirements can be relaxed, and thus a larger cluster size (i.e. a slightly worse spatial resolution) can be accepted; the hit rate on the chambers will be higher, due to the high beam intensity: the main source of hits is the interaction of the beam with residual gas in the beam pipe. In particular, a few detectors are expected to be irradiated up to almost 100 Hz/cm2 . Moreover, the data-taking time per year in p-p collisions will be 10 times higher than in A-A. The number of integrated hits will then be much higher leading to more relevant ageing eects compared to nucleus-nucleus runs.
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The two above facts, i.e. the possibility to accept a larger cluster size and the need to reduce the charge, led the collaboration to consider avalanche operation in p-p collisions. Avalanche operation is possible with the ADULT chip described earlier, with the condition of setting the high threshold equal to the low one. Since a threshold lower than 10 mV can not be set on the ADULT chip, the avalanche mixture must be highly saturated, in order to provide signals large enough to be read with the same front-end electronics as in A-A collisions.
Chapter 4
RPCs commissioning with cosmic rays

As explained in the previous chapter, the trigger system of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer consists of two trigger stations (MT1 and MT2) located at about 16 m from the interaction point and 1 m apart from each other, placed behind an iron muon lter, as shown in Figure 4.1. The lter has a thickness of 120
Figure 4.1: Schematic 3-D view of the ALICE Muon Trigger system cm, corresponding to 7.2 interaction lengths, and performs muon selection by stopping the low-energy background particles and hadrons escaped from the front absorber. Each station is constituted by two planes of 18 Resistive Plate Chambers. RPCs are large area detectors, made up of low resistivity ( 109 m ) Bakelite electrodes separated by 2 mm wide gas gap. The surface of the Bakelite foils 44
CHAPTER 4. RPCS COMMISSIONING WITH COSMIC RAYS
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on the gap side is painted with linseed oil, while the external surface is painted with graphite, with one layer connected to the high voltage and the other to the ground. The signal is picked up by read-out strips connected with the Front-End Electronics (FEE), which basically consists of a leading-edge discriminator stage followed by a shaper. The strips are placed on both sides of the chambers, in order to provide a bi-dimensional information. The horizontal strips measure the bending deviation due to the dipole magnetic eld, while vertical strips measure the non-bending direction. The two layers of read-out pads are therefore called bending and non-bending plane respectively. The signals coming from the FEE, consisting in the x and y red strip patterns of the four detection planes, are sent to the local trigger electronics. The whole system is divided in 234 detection areas, each of them associated with a local trigger board. Figure 4.3 shows a schematic view of the local board position in one plane of trigger chambers, as seen from the interaction point. The local board density reects the strip segmentation which is ner in the region close to the beam pipe, where a higher particle multiplicity is expected: in particular, moving from the beam pipe outwards, the strip pitch is about 1, 2 and 4 cm in the bending plane and about 2 and 4 cm in the non-bending plane. The main aim of the local electronics is to perform the local trigger algorithm and deliver the trigger decision on single tracks, and to send strip patterns and trigger decision in a pipeline memory which is read-out on occurrence of an ALICE trigger sequence. The geometry of the detection elements is projective: straight tracks from the interaction point cross the strip with the same ID number in all chambers. The principle of the pT cut with the trigger relies on the use of an estimated deviation of the measured track with respect to the track of a muon with innite momentum (see Figure 4.2).
Figure 4.2: The muon arm trigger principle, based on the estimation of the transverse momentum of the track: the larger the deviation, with respect to the pT straight line, the lower the pT of the track.
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Figure 4.3: View of one of the trigger chambers (looking from the interaction point) showing the 18 RPCs and the 234 trigger boards.The board enumeration, both in labels and numbers (more suitable for interfacing with the analysis software) is also shown.
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The estimation is performed by the local boards. The maximum measurable deection has been xed, for practical reasons, to 8 strips in the vertical direction and 1 in the horizontal direction. This denes the maximum width of the open roads between MT1 and MT2.
4.1
Eciency evaluation
A detailed knowledge of the detector features is a central point in an experiment. The determination of physical quantities, such as the inclusive or dierential cross sections, requires acceptance and eciency corrections to measured data, which have to be properly determined, either by simulations or direct measurements. The eciency of each detection element is usually measured during the commissioning phase, before the nal installation in situ. However, for detectors designed to work for a period of some years, the possibility that the initial efciency can undergo some variations with time has to be taken into account: it is therefore important to develop methods and tools allowing to monitor the detector status during the experiment life-time. This acquires a particular importance at the beginning of data taking, since it can be a powerfool tool to check the correct functionality of the hardware. The eciency of the muon trigger RPC modules was measured in Torino with cosmic rays before their installation in ALICE cavern. These tests showed that the typical eciency of the RPCs was above 95%. Then, a method was developed to measure the RPC eciency during datat taking, both with cosmic rays and beam [17]. Due to the large area covered by each chamber, the possible variation in eciency might be not homogeneous; so the method has been developed to allow eciency measurements with high granularity. Method for eciency measurements The signal on RPCs is collected by strips positioned on both sides, read out by the Front-End Electronics (FEE). Strips on the so called bending plane lie horizontally and provide information on the position of the crossing particle in the direction along which muons are bent due to the dipole magnetic eld. Analogously, strips on the non-bending plane lie vertically and provide information on the position along the direction orthogonal to the one previously described. The trigger algorithm searches, separately in the bending and non-bending plane, for red strips which lie within a region of dened width: the trigger condition is fullled by a particle if it res the strips in at least three out of four chambers in both planes. If the triggerability condition is satised, a track can be dened out of the trigger response. Given a sample of Ntot particles, the number of reconstructed tracks ring all the chambers is:
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where the chambers are conventionally numbered from 11 to 14 in order to distinguish them from the 10 tracking chambers. Analogously, the number of muons that would be triggered even if the information of the chamber ch is not taken into account is:
Hence, the eciency of the chamber ch can be calculated as:
It is worth noting that the eciency can be calculated separately for the bending and non-bending plane, since the 3/4 condition has to be satised by both independently. The algorithm for the chamber eciency measurement, analyzes the reconstructed tracks searching for the presence of the associated red strips in all chambers: in this way it possible to determine N4/4 and N3/3 and hence the chamber eciency ch . The procedure can be summarized as: determination of the intersection point between the reconstructed trigger track and the trigger chamber; identication of the strip corresponding to that point according to the chamber plane geometry and segmentation; search for a red strip in the region of 1 strip around the intersected one. If the strip pitch is smaller than 2 cm, which happens only for the strips in the bending plane closest to the beam pipe, the region is set to 2 cm. It is important to notice that the track reconstruction in the trigger chambers is not as accurate as the one in the tracker. The choice of the maximum value between the dimension of 1 strip and 2 cm, was introduced in order to account for any residual between the reconstructed impact point and real one. In some case the muons can interact with the iron wall, giving rise to a shower of particles, resulting in many strips red in a restricted region ( Fig. 4.4). Under
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these circumstances the reconstructed track may be biased and the probability of mismatch between the track and the corresponding red strips increases. These diculties can be overcome by requiring that the track entering the algorithm: matches a reconstructed track in the tracker; crosses the trigger chambers in a region with at most 2 red strips in an area of 3 strips around the intersection point. It has to be underline that the denition of the searching area, as many other parameters, is fully customizable.
Figure 4.4: On the left a cosmic ray shower. On the right a clear single track. In the rst case the track is not taken into account in chamber eciency determination to avoid ambiguities. Track is used for the eciency calculation in the second case. This simple method can be applied to all avaible data, with no need of dedicated runs. In this way the chamber eciency can be constantly monitored with high statistics. Therefore, the calculated eciency is an average over the eciencies of all RPCs belonging to chamber ch. However, the projective geometry of the Muon Spectrometer allows to determine the eciency for each RPC.
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It is enough to apply the explained method to a sub-sample of tracks that cross the RPCs placed at the same position on each chamber. The nal result is a set of 18 N4/4 and N3/3 values, whose ratio gives the eciency for each RPC, RP C . ch The eciency determination can also be repeated for the smallest part of the
Figure 4.5: Details of the trigger chambers installation: RPCs are placed in an alternated sequence on both sides of the supports.
detector entering the trigger algorithm: the trigger local boards. The method adopted is the same used to determine the eciency for each RPC: since local boards are disposed in a projective geometry it is possible, also in this case, to calculate the ratio N4/4 / N3/3 for the sub-sample of tracks crossing the boards placed at the same position in all the chambers. In this way it is possible to measure up to 234 eciency points for both bending and non-bending planes in each chamber. In the following section, it will be presented the result of eciency evaluation of the trigger chambers through a set of runs with cosmic rays.
4.2
Cosmic rays commissioning in the ALICE Cavern
In order to study and analyse the global performances of ALICE Muon Spectrometer System two periods of cosmic ray data taking were scheduled during
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the current year: in March-April the rst one and in August-September the last one. The main purpose of this commissioning phase is the global test of the Muon Spectrometer with the check of the detectors performances in all its hardware and software components. Through these analysis, it is then possible to test separately the Trigger Chambers and the Tracking Chambers and to verify their global behaviour during such cosmic runs: the muon tracks reconstructed in the trigger chambers have to match the ones obtained considering the tracking system. As for the Trigger chambers, dark current and rate measurements have been performed during all the runs in order to monitor continuously the system status. Due to its geometrical acceptance and consequently its projective geometry trigger ( the tracks triggered have to come from the Interaction Point IP ), the ALICE Muon Spectrometer is not designed to detect cosmic rays ( cosmic ux is cos2 , with the zenithal angle =-(/2) where is the polar angle respect to the LHC beam axis). Nevertheless, in order to study the global features of the system, the nearly horizontal tracks triggered are very useful for our aims. The RPC eciency was studied by using the detection plane redundancy: indeed, the trigger algorithm requires only three over four detection planes to be red, allowing to study the fourth plane.
Figure 4.6: Number of tracks used for the eciency evaluation slat per slat
It results (as it will be shown in the following paragraph) in an eciency greater than 90% for about all the RPCs. This rather conservative value is due both to the poor statistics for the RPCs closest to the beam pipe (Fig. 4.6) and to geometrical systematic eects relevant in cosmic ray data taking. In fact, the diculty in determining the absolute value of RPC eciency is due to specic cosmic run conditions such as the timing between the two trigger stations which is not optimized for cosmics coming from the direction opposite to IP. Furthermore, as cosmic rays are not synchronized with the LHC clock used by the electronics, the FEE (Front-End Electronics) timing dispersion induced
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a loss of eciency. All these eects result in a reduction of the measured eciency: as a consequence of this what it is interesting in our test is not the eciency absolute value but the shape of the eciency - HV curve (in order to set the correct working voltage for each RPCs). With the four muon trigger planes at nominal high voltage, the total trigger rate was in streamer mode 0.18 Hz and in avalanche mode 0.22 Hz. The cosmic muon trigger rate equal to 0.07 Hz. The data analysis shows that events are divided in two types (Fig. 4.7): 60% of showers with a large number of hits on each detection planes and 40% of single tracks ( ). The shape of the polar angle distribution (Fig. 4.8) y of single tracks in the vertical plane (z,y) reects the cosmic ray zenithal distribution, but with an asymmetry between negative and positive angles.
Figure 4.7: Event display of a cosmic shower (on the left) and of a cosmic muon (on the right)
Positive angles are associated to forward particles ( coming from the interaction point), while negative angles are due to backward particles (coming from Jura mountain side, opposite to the interaction point). This asymmetry is due to the timing of the Front-End electronics which is tuned to get the best eciency for forward particles. Moreover, it has been conjectured that the ux of backward cosmic rays might reduced further by a shadow eect of the Jura mountain.
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Figure 4.8: Polar angle distribution in the vertical plane y of single cosmic ray tracks
Figure 4.9: Polar angle distribution in the vertical plane y of single cosmic ray tracks slat per slat
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4.2.1
Tests in Streamer Mode
During the rst cosmic ray data taking ( scheduled in March-April 2009 ), the results were obtained with the muon dipole magnet o and with the RPCs operating in streamer mode. The cosmic ray runs followed the next steps: rstly some runs with all the planes at Working Voltage ( HV Nominal ) were performed (for 1100 minutes); secondly the characterisation of the plane MT12 started; the other three planes are kept at the same voltage while MT12 is lowered down to 1. HV Nominal minus 150 V (for 770 minutes ) 2. HV Nominal minus 300 V (for 1400 minutes ) 3. HV Nominal minus 450 V (for 1330 minutes ) 4. HV Nominal minus 600 V (for 2600 minutes ) nally the characterisation of the plane MT22 was performed: MT11, MT12 and MT21 are kept at nominal voltage while MT22 is lowered down to 1. HV Nominal minus 300 V (for 610 minutes ) 2. HV Nominal minus 600 V (for 450 minutes ) It is important to remark that each RPC has its own working voltage which has been estimated ( for streamer mode operation ) during an intensive period of tests that have been carried out at the INFN laboratories at Torino. Running at nominal High Voltage, the eciencies obtained for each plane of the two trigger stations are shown in the following (Fig. 4.11 - 4.14 ) coloured maps where the eciency is calculated slat per slat ( on the left side) and local board per local board ( on the right side ). Thanks to the trigger algorithm, this eciency evaluation is done separately for the bending and the non-bending plane, so it is possible to inspect their performances one by one.
Figure 4.10: The ALICE Muon Trigger System
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Figure 4.11: Maps of the eciency: slat and local board (MT11)
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The previous results, shown through coloured maps, can be summarized with the following graphics (Fig. 4.15) containing the eciencies for the four planes slat per slat at Nominal High Voltage.
Figure 4.15: Eciency slat per slat for each plane.
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Some interesting remarks, concerning the previous gures, have to be done. First of all, it can be noticed that the eciencies of the external planes MT11 ( in the rst station) and MT22 ( in the second station) are lower in comparison with the internal planes ( MT12 and MT21). This is not a genuine behaviour of the detector itself but it is the consequence of the particular experimental set-up used for the eciency evaluation: actually a standard eciency evaluation (Fig. 4.16 - left) is performed by placing the detector under inspection between two other detectors. In the Muon Spectrometer case, this condition occurs only if the internal planes are considered: as a consequence of this, the eciency evaluation for the external planes is aected by a systematic error which results in a reduction of the measured eciency.
Figure 4.16: On the left the standard eciency evaluation set-up and on the right the Muon Spectrometer set-up.
In addiction to this, the coloured maps show some local boards completely white: this is linked to the presence of dierent electronic problems that, thanks to the commissioning tests, have been found and solved. These hardware issues can be more clearly understood by analysing the graphic (Fig. 4.17) with the eciency correlation between bending and non-bending plane for all the slats of the four trigger planes. If a slat presents a dierent behaviour between the bending and the nonbending plane ( for example slat 17 in MT12 which has a very low eciency just in the non-bending plane) this is most probably an electronic defect of that problematic plane. Instead, if the slat has the same bending and non-bending behaviour (with a suspect low eciency in both planes) this is almost surely a global slats problem. In order to achieve the global performances of the whole muon trigger system,it is important to consider the eciency - High Voltage curve which enables us to check, slat per slat, if the nominal voltage used is the correct one.
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Figure 4.17: Eciency correlation between bending and non-bending plane.
It has to be remarked that the voltage is lowered ( this has been done for MT12 and MT22 ), at dierent steps, just in the plane under inspection while the other three planes are kept at nominal voltage. In the next pictures (Fig 4.18 - 4.21), two dierent slats are considered: slat 13 and slat 4 ( see Fig. 4.3 to localize their position in the trigger plane ). The rst one, thanks to its position, as it can be seen in Fig. 4.6 has a good statistics (remember that we are triggering on nearly horizontal cosmic muons) while the second one has a lower statistics ( it results in a larger statistical error on the calculated eciency). The blue line present in each graphic shows the rate (Hz) of the reconstructed tracks used in the eciency evaluation after the selection imposed to reject shower events. After this commissiong phase, the following conclusions have to be done: although the trigger chambers are not designed to detect cosmic muons, the cosmic ray data taking gives us the possibility to check the whole detector; the Trigger Chambers system, operating in streamer mode, reveals a good eciency, uniform all over the four trigger planes although there are systematic eects that make not possible to obtain the absolute eciency value. Anyway, the main goal of our activity is the test of the correctness of the high voltage working value; it has been demonstrated the possibility to characterize the RPCs in situ ( Alice Cavern); the eciency evaluation can be used to nd out some hardware issues such as incorrect cabling of front-end boards or front-end boards working not properly;
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Figure 4.18: Characterization Curve MT12 : Slat 4 (HV changes just in MT12)
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4.2.2
Preliminary tests in Avalanche Mode
As explained at the end of Chapter 3, during the proton-proton collision program the trigger chambers will operate in Avalanche Mode to satisfy the particular requirements of this data taking. The entire set of RPCs, making up the Muon Trigger system, were completely characterised in streamer mode during an intensive period of tests that have been carried out at the INFN laboratories in Torino. Thus, it was possible to describe in detail all the detectors ( lling a database available to the collaboration) and to have a rst estimation of the voltage at which each RPC should operate in order to have it fully ecient. The eciency meaurements have been performed with cosmic rays. It has to be pointed out that the aim of the tests includes the measurement of the detectors eciency even if its absolute value is not achievable: the environment in which the detectors have been tested, dierent from the one in which they will operate, presents sistematics which aect the measurement of eciency (which is underestimated of 2%) [18]. For the above reasons, the tests focused on aspects such as the intrinsic noise of the detectors, the current drawn during operation and, above all, the uniformity of performances of the detectors. To prevent the trigger system from biasing the measurement, it is important to have the whole trigger station equally ecient. Indeed, what needs to be avoided is to have detectors with nonuniform behaviour throughout their surface, since this would lead to dierences in eciency that can not be controlled externally. This is why the measurement of eciency is performed on a local scale, by dividing each detector in virtual cells and measuring the eciency separately for each cell. Since the voltage of each of the 72 detectors is regulated separately, it is possible to operate each detector at the proper voltage in terms of noise, eciency and current. The same tests are needed for the avalanche mode operation too. In order to have an idea of what the best voltage choice is for each detector using the avalanche mixture, a set of dierent tests has been performed in Torino with a comparison between the two operation modes. The ideal working voltage has been determined later during the commissioning phase scheduled in AugustSeptember 2009. Here is the complete list of all test carried out at INFN laboratories: 1. the detection of possible gas leaks; 2. the electrode resistivity measured with the argon method; 3. the current-High Voltage curve (ramp-up) and the detection of possible leakage ohmic currents; 4. the eciency - High Voltage curve in cells 2020 cm2 ;
5. the mean noise rate and the noise map of the detector, with the autotrigger method; 6. the eciency map at working HV, with a granularity of 22 cm2 ;
CHAPTER 4. RPCS COMMISSIONING WITH COSMIC RAYS 7. the dark current absorbed at working HV. Eciency measurements Set-up
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The detector eciency is measured with cosmic rays (muons) by means of a dedicated test station (Fig. 4.22), composed of: three planes of nine scintillators each, covering an area of 90150 cm2 ; two tracking RPCs (17287 cm2 each); four test slots where the RPCs to be tested are placed.
Figure 4.22: The Torino test station set-up.
Given the surface of the tracking RPCs and the number of available front-end boards and read-out channels, two half-RPCs can be tested at the same time: the detectors have thus been tested two by two. A moving support structure with wheels has been developed, so that it is possible to select the half-detector to be tested just by moving the trigger system (i.e. the scintillators and the tracking RPCs), without moving the detector itself.
Read-out and DAQ The front-end electronics used for the test is the ALICE one: the detectors have been equipped with the ADULT front-end boards described in Chapter 3.
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The two half-detectors on the testing planes are read out by means of a set of Coincidence Registers, while the signal from the tracking RPCs is read out by means of a set of FERA ADCs with zero suppression. The scintillator planes are read out by means of discriminators. The trigger is issued if at least one strip per each plane of the two tracking RPCs and at least one scintillator per plane have been red. The logical scheme of the electronic chain for the tests is reported in Fig. 4.23. The data acquisition and monitoring are performed on a terminal on the site, by means of the DATE software.
Figure 4.23: Logical scheme of the electronic chain for the measurement of eciency with the Torino test station.
Algorithm The two tracking RPCs are read on both sides with orthogonal 2 cm wide strips: with the spatial information provided by these tracking RPCs, the cosmic rays can be tracked to obtain information on the impact point on the test slot planes and to perform a local measurement of the eciency ( Fig. 4.24). Only events with only one cluster per plane in the tracking RPCs are selected (to avoid ambiguities); the cluster size is required not to be larger than 2 strips (to improve resolution and cut o cosmic ray showers). If (x1 ,y1 ) and (x2 ,y2 ) are the impact coordinates on the two tracking RPCs ( located at heights z1 and z2 ), the expected impact coordinates on the two RPCs
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Figure 4.24: Local measurement of the RPC eciency by means of two tracking detectors.
under test ( located at heights ztest,1 and ztest,2 ) will be (i=1,2):
The resolution on the position reconstruction is evaluated by means of Monte Carlo simulations and is of the order of the cm. Once the impact point on the testing plane has been reconstructed, the event is assigned to a cell on a grid dened on the testing plane. The eciency of each cell will be calculated by dividing the number of detected cosmic rays in that cell by the number of events assigned to the cell. Given the above mentioned resolution, the minimum area of each cell is of 22 cm2 . Efficiency curves The eciency as a function of the high voltage is measured in 21 dierent cells for each half-chamber: the surface of the cell is about 2020 cm2 . This is done by using the information on the expected impact point obtained via the tracking procedure described above. The eciency curve can be dierent from cell to cell. Each curve is tted by a suitable function, i.e. the integral of an asymmetric gaussian distribution:
CHAPTER 4. RPCS COMMISSIONING WITH COSMIC RAYS where
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Once the t parameters are extracted, four more parameters are evaluated, which will be used to characterise the curve: the maximum eciency reached by the detector;
max
HV50 the voltage value at which the detector has 50% eciency; HV90 the voltage value at which the detector has 90% eciency; the slope of the curve in the linear region. The spread of such parameters can be used to evaluate the uniformity of the detector performance. An example of such curves is shown in Fig. 4.25.
Figure 4.25: Eciency curves for two 2020 cm2 cells of a same RPC.
Efficiency maps To evaluate even better the uniformity of the detectors, and to detect any imperfection, though small, eciency maps are measured at two voltage values, 8200V and 8100V: such values are right above the working voltage for most detectors ( in streamer mode ). The cells for eciency maps are about 22 cm2 large. With a 1000000 events run ( 10 h acquisition time), the statistics is of about 500 events in central cells, 100 in peripherical cells and 50 in the very side cells (Fig. 4.26). The resulting statistical error at working voltage ranges from 1% to 4% according
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Figure 4.26: Distribution of triggered events for eciency measurement over the surface of a half chamber. Units are given in cells. The area of the cells is 22 cm2 .
to the position of the cell. As it was mentioned above, the resolution is of the order of the centimeter, so that, in the eciency map (Fig. 4.27), even the spacers that keep the distance between the electrodes constant (whose diameter is 1 cm) can be resolved.
Figure 4.27: Eciency map of a half chamber operating at 8200V.Units are given in cells. The area of the cells is 22 cm2 .
The eciency has also been measured separately for the two orthogonal X and Y strip planes. In such a way, it has been possible to separate eciency problems due to the readout planes (e.g. short-circuited strips, unstable electric contact or bas insulation) from problems arising from the gas gap: if the problem is seen on both readout planes, it is most probably due to the gas gap, while if
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it is limited to one of the planes, the problem is most likely due to the strips. In this last case, the detector can be opened to check the readout planes and detect any imperfections. One of the most common causes of localised eciency loss is the presence of bumps on the surface, causing a locally wider gap between the electrodes (i.e. a lower electric eld): such an eciency loss can be recovered by operating the detector at a higher voltage, so that the electric eld is high enough for the moltiplication process to start all over the surface. Another possible cause of local eciency loss is the roughness of the surface ( which may also be due to linseed oil dripping from the surface), causing spikes on the surface: these are a source of repeated unwanted discharges in the gap, leading to a localised voltage loss. Such a problem is usually observed together with an increase in the current absorbed by the detector. In this case, raising the high voltage will not help. Noise and dark current measurements The noise of the detectors is quantied by the dark counting rate, i.e. the counting rate of the detectors with no beam or irradiation, when the hits are only due to cosmic rays and intrinsic noise. The counting rate is measured locally with the autotrigger method: the trigger is given by the detector itself, selecting events with at least one hit on both strip planes. The logical scheme of the electronic chain for the autotrigger measurements is shown in Fig. 4.28.
Figure 4.28: Logical scheme of the electronic chain for the autotrigger measurement.
The detector surface can be divided in cells dened by the crossing of strips in the two directions. The number of hits Nij in the cell is obtained by couting the number of times that the strips i (in the x direction) and j (in the y direction) have been red in the same event. The rate Rij (Hz/cm2 ) of the cell (i,j)
CHAPTER 4. RPCS COMMISSIONING WITH COSMIC RAYS is calculated from Nij :
73
where Aij is the area of the strip crossing, t is the acquisition time and the ratio of non-vetoed to vetoed counts over the whole detector accounts for the dead time of the data acquisition system. Such a method provides the noise map of the detectors (Fig. 4.29(a) ), which makes possible the detection of noisy spots such as those of Fig. 4.29(b). The measurement of the noise map is performed as a function of high voltage, to disentangle genuine detector noise eects from noisy channels in the readout electronics. The mean noise rate of the whole tested area is simply calculated as:
where A is the surface of the whole tested area, i.e. approximately a half detector: the mean rate of the whole detector is obtained from the surface-weighted average of the mean noise rates of the left and right halves of the detector. The autotrigger runs have always been performed after the detector had been working for at least one high statistics run, to prevent the result from being inuenced by the early stage of operation, when dust or impurities can cause a higher noise. The dark current absorbed by the detector is an important parameter because ageing eects are expected to be an increasing function of the current drawn during long-term operation. The main source of dark current is of course the dark rate, but other eects such as ohmic parasitic currents may be present. The evolution with time of the current is monitored during the runs, in order to make sure that the measured value be stable.
74
Figure 4.29: Two examples of noise maps of a RPC operating at 8200V .
CHAPTER 4. RPCS COMMISSIONING WITH COSMIC RAYS Results of the preliminary tests in avalanche mode
75
In the following pages the results, obtained during the preliminary tests in avalanche mode at the INFN laboratories in Torino, will be presented. First of all lets consider the eciency maps concerning two dierent RPCs whose results are summarized in the next list: Gap 1210 eciency evaluation in streamer mode at two voltages: 8200V and 8100V ( Fig. 4.30, 4.31 ); eciency evaluation in avalanche mode at voltage 10800V (Fig. 4.32) Gap 127 eciency evaluation in streamer mode at two voltages: 8200V and 8100V ( Fig. 4.33, 4.34 ); eciency evaluation in avalanche mode at voltage 10800V (Fig. 4.35) It can be seen that the two RPCs have dierent performances: while the gas gap 1210 reaches a good eciency both in streamer and in avalanche mode at these voltages, the gas gap 127 presents a very low eciency down to 4050% in the area around the cell (15,5) and this behaviour appears in both the operating modes. For the sure of completeness, we note that in the pictures shown in the next pages, just a half chamber is considered. Finally, lets consider the eciency as a function of the high voltage: in Fig. 4.36 and 4.37 there are the curves regarding gap 1210 (cell 6-2) in streamer and avalanche mode. In order to have an idea of the working voltage in avalanche mode, it has to be considered the distribution of the voltage value (in the 21 cells) at which the detector has 50% eciency ( Fig. 4.38 - 4.39). Fitting this distribution with a gaussian distribution and comparing the mean values obtained in avalanche and streamer mode, a ratio from the two values can be calculated. If the streamer working voltage value and the above ratio are known, it is then possible to compute the desired result (avalanche working voltage value). It has to be remarked that this rst estimation of the avalanche working voltage has been obtained from the streamer values using the same ratio ( calculated for two chambers during the preliminary tests at INFN laboratories in Torino ) for all the trigger chambers.
76
tst1, efficiency x.vs.y

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0
Figure 4.30: Eciency map of gap 1210 at 8200V (streamer).

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0
Figure 4.32: Eciency map of gap 1210 at 10800V (avalanche).
77

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0
Figure 4.35: Eciency map of gap 127 at 10800V (avalanche).
78
Figure 4.36: Eciency curve for gap 1210 (cell 6-2) in streamer mode.
Figure 4.37: Eciency curve for gap 1210 (cell 6-2) in avalanche mode.
79
Figure 4.38: Distribution of the voltage value at which the detector has 50% eciency in the 21 cells. Gap 1210 streamer mode
Figure 4.39: Distribution of the voltage value at which the detector has 50% eciency in the 21 cells. Gap 1210 avalanche mode
80
4.2.3
Tests in Avalanche Mode
During the second cosmic ray data taking ( scheduled in August-September 2009 ), the results were mainly obtained with the muon dipole magnet on and with the RPCs operating in avalanche mode. In the next pages the following results will be presented: the eciencies (slat per slat) for the four planes in the bending and in the non-bending plane at Nominal High Voltage are shown (Fig. 4.40 and 4.41). It has to be remarked that to establish the working voltage used in the initial part of the run it was fundamental the work done in Torino completed with an intensive analysis (at dierent voltage values) in situ; secondly the same results are expressed for each local board with coloured maps ( Fig. 4.42 - 4.45); during the run, eciency measurements were taken at dierent H.V. around the initial value to check the correctness of the working voltage estimations; dierent runs have been performed at these three voltage values: nominalHV, nominalHV+100V and nominalHV-100V. In the gures 4.46 and 4.47 the comparison is shown. The coloured maps ( Fig. 4.42 - 4.45) show some local boards completely white: this is linked to the presence of dierent electronic problems such as incorrect cabling of the front-end boards or front-end boards working not properly. Thanks to the commissioning tests, all the hardware issues have been found and solved.
81
Figure 4.40: Eciency slat per slat at nominal HV in the bending plane.
Figure 4.41: Eciency slat per slat at nominal HV in the non-bending plane.
82
Chamber 11: efficiency bendPlane

Y (cm)
Chamber 11: efficiency nonBendPlane

92 108 91 107 116 90 106 89 105 115 88 104 87 103 114 86 102 85 101 113
234
225 209 193 177 155 224 208 192 176 154
133 16 38 132 15 37 131 14 36 130 13 35 129 12 34 128 11 33 127 10 32 126 9 31 30 29 28 27 26 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 118 25 8 24 7 23 6 22 5 21 4 20 3 19 2 18 1 17
60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39
76 75 74 73 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61
Y (cm)
300
117
1 0.9
300
234 225 209 193 177 155 224 208 192 176 154 233 223 207 191 175 153 222 206 190 174 152 232 131 14 36 130 13 35 129 12 34 128 11 33 127 10 32 126 9 31 30 29 28 27 26 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 118 25 8 24 7 23 6 22 5 21 4 20 3 19 2 18 1 17 58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 74 73 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 90 106 89 105 115 221 205 189 173 151 220 204 188 231 219 203 187 218 202 186 230 217 201 185 216 200 184 229 172 150 171 149 170 148 169 147 168 146 167 145 166 144 165 143 164 142 163 141 162 140 161 139 88 104 87 103 114 86 102 85 101 113 84 100 83 82 81 80 79 78 99 112 98 97 111 213 197 181 159 137 96 95 110 211 195 179 157 135 226 210 194 178 156 134 94 212 196 180 158 136 227 133 16 38 132 15 37 60 59 76 75 92 108 91 107 116 117
1 0.9
200
233 223 207 191 175 153 222 206 190 174 152 232
0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1
200
0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1
100
231
221 205 189 173 151 220 204 188 219 203 187 172 150 171 149 170 148 169 147 168 146 167 145 166 144 165 143 164 142 163 141 162 140 161 139
100
0 -100
218 202 186 230 217 201 185 216 200 184 229 215 199 183 228
84 100 83 82 81 80 79 78 99 112 98 97 111 96 95 110 94 93 109
0 -100
215 199 183 228
214 198 182 160 138 213 197 181 159 137
214 198 182 160 138
-200
212 196 180 158 136 227 211 195 179 157 135 226 210 194 178 156 134
-200
77
77
93
109
-300
-200
-100
100
200 X (cm)
-300
-200
-100
100
200 X (cm)
Figure 4.42: Eciency for each local board: MT11 bending and non-bending.

Y (cm)

92 108 91 107 116 90 106 89 105 115 88 104 87 103 114 86 102 85 101 113
234
225 209 193 177 155 224 208 192 176 154
133 16 38 132 15 37 131 14 36 130 13 35 129 12 34 128 11 33 127 10 32 126 9 31 30 29 28 27 26 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 118 25 8 24 7 23 6 22 5 21 4 20 3 19 2 18 1 17
60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39
76 75 74 73 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61
Y (cm)
300
117
1 0.9
300
234 225 209 193 177 155 224 208 192 176 154 133 16 38 132 15 37 131 14 36 130 13 35 129 12 34 128 11 33 127 10 32 126 9 31 30 29 28 27 26 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 118 25 8 24 7 23 6 22 5 21 4 20 3 19 2 18 1 17 60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 76 75 74 73 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 92 108 91 107 116 223 207 191 175 153 222 206 190 174 152 232 90 106 89 105 115 221 205 189 173 151 220 204 188 231 219 203 187 218 202 186 230 217 201 185 216 200 184 229 172 150 171 149 170 148 169 147 168 146 167 145 166 144 165 143 164 142 163 141 162 140 161 139 88 104 87 103 114 86 102 85 101 113 84 100 83 82 81 80 79 78 99 112 98 97 111 213 197 181 159 137 96 95 110 211 195 179 157 135 94 212 196 180 158 136 227 117
1 0.9
200 100
233 223 207 191 175 153 222 206 190 174 152 232 221 205 189 173 151 220 204 188 231 219 203 187 218 202 186 230 217 201 185 216 200 184 229 172 150 171 149 170 148 169 147 168 146 167 145 166 144 165 143 164 142 163 141 162 140 161 139
0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1
200 100
233
0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1
0 -100
84 100 83 82 81 80 79 78 99 112 98 97 111 96 95 110 94 93 109
0 -100
215 199 183 228
215 199 183 228
214 198 182 160 138 213 197 181 159 137
214 198 182 160 138
-200 -300
212 196 180 158 136 227 211 195 179 157 135 226 210 194 178 156 134
-200 -300
77
226
210 194 178 156 134
77
93
109
-200
-100
100
200 X (cm)
-200
-100
100
200 X (cm)
83

Y (cm)

Y (cm)
300 200 100
1
234 225 209 193 177 155 224 208 192 176 154 233 223 207 191 175 153 222 206 190 174 152 232 221 205 189 173 151 220 204 188 231 219 203 187 218 202 186 230 217 201 185 216 200 184 229 172 150 171 149 170 148 169 147 168 146 167 145 166 144 165 143 164 142 163 141 162 140 161 139 129 12 34 128 11 33 127 10 32 126 9 31 30 29 28 27 26 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 118 25 8 24 7 23 6 22 5 21 4 20 3 19 2 18 1 17 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 88 104 87 103 114 86 102 85 101 113 84 100 83 82 81 80 79 78 99 112 98 97 111 213 197 181 159 137 96 95 110 211 195 179 157 135 226 210 194 178 156 134 94 212 196 180 158 136 227 131 14 36 130 13 35 58 57 74 73 90 106 89 105 115 133 16 38 132 15 37 60 59 76 75 92 108 91 107 116 117
300 200 100
1
234 225 209 193 177 155 224 208 192 176 154 233 223 207 191 175 153 222 206 190 174 152 232 221 205 189 173 151 220 204 188 231 219 203 187 218 202 186 230 217 201 185 216 200 184 229 172 150 171 149 170 148 169 147 168 146 167 145 166 144 165 143 164 142 163 141 162 140 161 139 129 12 34 128 11 33 127 10 32 126 9 31 30 29 28 27 26 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 118 25 8 24 7 23 6 22 5 21 4 20 3 19 2 18 1 17 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 88 104 87 103 114 86 102 85 101 113 84 100 83 82 81 80 79 78 99 112 98 97 111 213 197 181 159 137 96 95 110 211 195 179 157 135 94 212 196 180 158 136 227 131 14 36 130 13 35 58 57 74 73 90 106 89 105 115 133 16 38 132 15 37 60 59 76 75 92 108 91 107 116 117
0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1
0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1
0 -100
0 -100
215 199 183 228
215 199 183 228
214 198 182 160 138
214 198 182 160 138
-200 -300
-200 -300
77
93
109
226
210 194 178 156 134
77
93
109
-200
-100
100
200 X (cm)
-200
-100
100
200 X (cm)

Y (cm)

Y (cm)
300 200 100
1
234 225 209 193 177 155 224 208 192 176 154 233 223 207 191 175 153 222 206 190 174 152 232 221 205 189 173 151 220 204 188 231 219 203 187 218 202 186 230 217 201 185 216 200 184 229 172 150 171 149 170 148 169 147 168 146 167 145 166 144 165 143 164 142 163 141 162 140 161 139 129 12 34 128 11 33 127 10 32 126 9 31 30 29 28 27 26 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 118 25 8 24 7 23 6 22 5 21 4 20 3 19 2 18 1 17 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 88 104 87 103 114 86 102 85 101 113 84 100 83 82 81 80 79 78 99 112 98 97 111 213 197 181 159 137 96 95 110 211 195 179 157 135 94 212 196 180 158 136 227 131 14 36 130 13 35 58 57 74 73 90 106 89 105 115 133 16 38 132 15 37 60 59 76 75 92 108 91 107 116 117
300 200 100
1
234 225 209 193 177 155 224 208 192 176 154 233 223 207 191 175 153 222 206 190 174 152 232 221 205 189 173 151 220 204 188 231 219 203 187 218 202 186 230 217 201 185 216 200 184 229 172 150 171 149 170 148 169 147 168 146 167 145 166 144 165 143 164 142 163 141 162 140 161 139 129 12 34 128 11 33 127 10 32 126 9 31 30 29 28 27 26 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 118 25 8 24 7 23 6 22 5 21 4 20 3 19 2 18 1 17 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 88 104 87 103 114 86 102 85 101 113 84 100 83 82 81 80 79 78 99 112 98 97 111 213 197 181 159 137 96 95 110 211 195 179 157 135 94 212 196 180 158 136 227 131 14 36 130 13 35 58 57 74 73 90 106 89 105 115 133 16 38 132 15 37 60 59 76 75 92 108 91 107 116 117
0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4
0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1
0 -100
0 -100
215 199 183 228
215 199 183 228
214 198 182 160 138
0.3 0.2 0.1 -200 -300
214 198 182 160 138
-200 -300
226
210 194 178 156 134
77
93
109
226
210 194 178 156 134
77
93
109
-200
-100
100
200 X (cm)
-200
-100
100
200 X (cm)
84
Chamber 11
efficiency
1
Chamber 12
efficiency
1
0.8
0.8
0.6
0.6
0.4
0.4
0.2
All_RV+100 All_RV All_RV-100

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 slat
0.2
10
12
14
16 slat
Chamber 13
efficiency
1
Chamber 14
efficiency
1
0.8
0.8
0.6
0.6
0.4
0.4
0.2
0.2
10
12
14
16 slat
10
12
14
16 slat
Figure 4.46: Eciency comparison (slat per slat) at nominalHV, nominalHV+100V and nominalHV-100V in the bending plane.
Chamber 11
efficiency
1
Chamber 12
efficiency
1
0.8
0.8
0.6
0.6
0.4
0.4
0.2
All_RV+100 All_RV All_RV-100

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 slat
0.2
10
12
14
16 slat
Chamber 13
efficiency
1
Chamber 14
efficiency
1
0.8
0.8
0.6
0.6
0.4
0.4
0.2
0.2
10
12
14
16 slat
10
12
14
16 slat
Figure 4.47: Eciency comparison (slat per slat) at nominalHV, nominalHV+100V and nominalHV-100V in the non-bending plane.
Conclusions
At the conclusion of this work, lets summarize the global RPC performances achieved during the tests in avalanche mode. Concerning the average current of the whole set of RPCs, a slow increase of average value has been noticed: in order to stop it the humidity of the gas mixture has been changed from the initial value of RH = 39 - 40 % to the nal value of RH = 37 %. As it can be seen in Fig. 4.48, at T = 21000 minutes the average current stops to increase.
Figure 4.48: Plot of the average current of the whole set of RPCs vs Time. At T = 21000 min the humidity of the gas mixtures was changed.
The detector current distribution, at working voltage, shows (Fig. 4.49) that about the whole set of RPCs has a current lower than 3 A.
85
86
Figure 4.49: Detector current distribution at Working Voltage.
An accurate inspection at the end of the runs showed that the cause of high current of the order of 67 A ( present in four RPCs ) was linked to electrostatic problems such as ohmic parasitic currents or current leakages through HV connectors and the external structures of the chamber. These RPCs have been repaired and their insulation carefully checked and improved. The behaviour of these repaired chambers will be tested very soon, well before the start of LHC operation. The only chambers which showed during the run a very unstable current, which could hardly be due to trivial eletric problems, was conclusively replaced with a new one. In Fig. 4.50 and 4.51 it is shown the single rate distribution at working voltage for the bending and the non-bending planes.
Figure 4.50: Single rate distribution at Working Voltage(bending plane).
87
Figure 4.51: Single rate distribution at Working Voltage(non-bending plane).
It can be notice that the single counting rate is smaller than 0.1 Hz/cm2 with the threshold at 10 mV used.
During the data taking with cosmic rays, the dipole magnetic eld was switch on and curved muon tracks have been reconstructed by the muon tracking chambers and the trigger chambers. An example of such reconstruction is shown in Fig. 4.52.
Figure 4.52: First reconstructed cosmic muon in the ALICE Muon Spectrometer in dipole magnetic eld.
List of Figures
1.1 1.2 The phase diagram of QCD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Temperature dependance of the energy density over T 4 in QCD with 2 and 3 degenerate quark avors as well as with two light and a heavier (strange) quark. The arrow on the right-side ordinates show the value of the Stefan-Boltzmann limit for an ideal quarkgluon gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Expected evolution of a nuclear collision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 3.1 3.2 3.3
7 8
Layout of the ALICE experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Schematic view of the AliRoot framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Data processing framework. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Schematic 3D view of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer . . . . . . 20 Schematic side view of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer . . . . . . 21 Front Absorber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 The Tracking Chambers of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer: a quadrant (a) and a slat (b). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 General view of the GMS setup: the red lines in the gure represent the optical lines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Average number of muons per central Pb-Pb collision with pT >pmin T emitted in 2.5<< 4 as a function of pmin . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 T Schematic 3D view of the ALICE Muon Trigger System (a); 25 Strip segmentation of the detectors in the ALICE Muon Trigger System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The ALICE Muon Trigger System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The ALICE Muon Trigger principle: projection in the bending (yz) plane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Overview of the trigger system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Structure of a single-gap Resistive Plate Chamber . . . . . . . . Shape of the avalanche (a) and evolution of the avalanche to the streamer (b,c) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Electric eld in presence of a big avalanche. E0 is the eld applied to the electrodes; Ea is the charge eld; Ec is the avalanchecathode eld. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A few typical streamer (a) and avalanche (b) pulses observed with an oscilloscope connected to the anode of a RPC with a 50 termination.Note the dierent voltage scale in the two plots. 88 29 33
34
3.4
39
LIST OF FIGURES 3.5 Typical pulse picked-up on a RPC operated in streamer mode, with a digital oscilloscope (1 GHz bandwidth) via a short BNC cable (50 impedance) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The ADULT Front-End chip for the RPCs of the ALICE Muon Trigger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Schematic 3-D view of the ALICE Muon Trigger system . . . . . The muon arm trigger principle, based on the estimation of the transverse momentum of the track: the larger the deviation, with respect to the pT straight line, the lower the pT of the track. View of one of the trigger chambers (looking from the interaction point) showing the 18 RPCs and the 234 trigger boards.The board enumeration, both in labels and numbers (more suitable for interfacing with the analysis software) is also shown. . . . . On the left a cosmic ray shower. On the right a clear single track. In the rst case the track is not taken into account in chamber eciency determination to avoid ambiguities. Track is used for the eciency calculation in the second case. . . . . . . . . . . . . Details of the trigger chambers installation: RPCs are placed in an alternated sequence on both sides of the supports. . . . . . . . Number of tracks used for the eciency evaluation slat per slat . Event display of a cosmic shower (on the left) and of a cosmic muon (on the right) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Polar angle distribution in the vertical plane y of single cosmic ray tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Polar angle distribution in the vertical plane y of single cosmic ray tracks slat per slat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The ALICE Muon Trigger System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maps of the eciency: slat and local board (MT11) . . . . . . . Maps of the eciency: slat and local board (MT12) . . . . . . . Maps of the eciency: slat and local board (MT13) . . . . . . . Maps of the eciency: slat and local board (MT14) . . . . . . . Eciency slat per slat for each plane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On the left the standard eciency evaluation set-up and on the right the Muon Spectrometer set-up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eciency correlation between bending and non-bending plane. . Characterization Curve MT12 : Slat 4 (HV changes just in MT12) Characterization Curve MT12 : Slat 13 (HV changes just in MT12) Characterization Curve MT22 : Slat 4 (HV changes just in MT22) Characterization Curve MT22 : Slat 13 (HV changes just in MT22) The Torino test station set-up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Logical scheme of the electronic chain for the measurement of eciency with the Torino test station. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Local measurement of the RPC eciency by means of two tracking detectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eciency curves for two 2020 cm2 cells of a same RPC. . . . . Distribution of triggered events for eciency measurement over the surface of a half chamber. Units are given in cells. The area of the cells is 22 cm2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
89
41 42 44
3.6
4.1 4.2
45
4.3
46
4.4
49 50 51 52 53 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 67 68 69 70
4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 4.18 4.19 4.20 4.21 4.22 4.23 4.24 4.25 4.26
71
LIST OF FIGURES
90
4.27 Eciency map of a half chamber operating at 8200V.Units are given in cells. The area of the cells is 22 cm2 . . . . . . . . . . . 71 4.28 Logical scheme of the electronic chain for the autotrigger measurement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 4.29 Two examples of noise maps of a RPC operating at 8200V . . . . 74 4.30 Eciency map of gap 1210 at 8200V (streamer). . . . . . . . . . 76 4.31 Eciency map of gap 1210 at 8100V (streamer). . . . . . . . . . 76 4.32 Eciency map of gap 1210 at 10800V (avalanche). . . . . . . . . 76 4.33 Eciency map of gap 127 at 8200V (streamer). . . . . . . . . . . 77 4.34 Eciency map of gap 127 at 8100V (streamer). . . . . . . . . . . 77 4.35 Eciency map of gap 127 at 10800V (avalanche). . . . . . . . . . 77 4.36 Eciency curve for gap 1210 (cell 6-2) in streamer mode. . . . . 78 4.37 Eciency curve for gap 1210 (cell 6-2) in avalanche mode. . . . . 78 4.38 Distribution of the voltage value at which the detector has 50% eciency in the 21 cells. Gap 1210 streamer mode . . . . . . . . 79 4.39 Distribution of the voltage value at which the detector has 50% eciency in the 21 cells. Gap 1210 avalanche mode . . . . . . . . 79 4.40 Eciency slat per slat at nominal HV in the bending plane. . . . 81 4.41 Eciency slat per slat at nominal HV in the non-bending plane. 81 4.42 Eciency for each local board: MT11 bending and non-bending. 82 4.43 Eciency for each local board: MT12 bending and non-bending. 82 4.44 Eciency for each local board: MT21 bending and non-bending. 83 4.45 Eciency for each local board: MT22 bending and non-bending. 83 4.46 Eciency comparison (slat per slat) at nominalHV, nominalHV+100V and nominalHV-100V in the bending plane. . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 4.47 Eciency comparison (slat per slat) at nominalHV, nominalHV+100V and nominalHV-100V in the non-bending plane. . . . . . . . . . 84 4.48 Plot of the average current of the whole set of RPCs vs Time. At T = 21000 min the humidity of the gas mixtures was changed. . 85 4.49 Detector current distribution at Working Voltage. . . . . . . . . . 86 4.50 Single rate distribution at Working Voltage(bending plane). . . . 86 4.51 Single rate distribution at Working Voltage(non-bending plane). 87 4.52 First reconstructed cosmic muon in the ALICE Muon Spectrometer in dipole magnetic eld. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Bibliography
[1] L. McLerran RHIC Physics: The Quark Gluon Plasma and The Color Glass Condensate: 4 Lectures. arXiv:hep-ph/0311028v1 3 Nov 2003 [2] U. Heinz From SPS to RHIC: Breaking the Barrier to the Quark Gluon Plasma. arXiv:hep-ph/0109006v1 2 Sept 2001 [3] J.D.Bjorken Highly relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions: The central rapidity region. Physical Review D (27) 1983 [4] J. Schukraft Little bang at big accelerators: Heavy ion physics from AGS to LHC. Nucl. Phys. B 75 (1999) [5] Elliptic ow of hyperons in Pb+Pb collisions at 158A GeV. arXiv:nuclex/0606026v2 17 Jan 2007 [6] D. Elia et al. Strange particle production in 158 and 40 A GeV/c Pb-Pb and p-Be collisions. J. Phys. G31 (2005) S135-S140 [7] T. Matsui and H.Satz J/ suppression by quark-gluon plasma formation. Physics Letters B 178 (1986) 416-422 [8] M. Leitch RHIC results on J/ . J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 34 (2007) S463-S469 [9] F. Carminati (ed.) et al. ALICE. J. Phys. G30, 1517 (2004) [10] ALICE Collaboration Technical Proposal. CERN/LHCC 95-71 [11] ALICE: Physics Performance Report, Volume I. J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 30 (2004) 1517-1763 [12] ALICE The forward muon spectrometer of ALICE: addendum to the technical proposal for a Large Ion Col lider experiment at the CERN LHC. LHC Tech. Proposal (CERN, Geneva, 1996) [13] P. Dupieux et al. ALICE Muon Trigger Performance. ALICE-INT-2006002 [14] R. Arnaldi et al. A dual threshold technique to improve the time resolution of resistive plate chambers is streamer mode. Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 457 (2001) 117-125 [15] R. Arnaldi et al. Front-End Electronics for the RPCs of the ALICE Dimuon Trigger. IEEE Trans.on Nucl. Sc. 52-4 (2005) 1176-1181 91
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[16] R. Arnaldi et al. Beam and ageing tests with a highly saturated avalanche gas mixture for the ALICE p-p data taking. Nucl. Phys. B 158 (2006) 149-153 [17] D. Stocco The ALICE Muon Spectrometer: trigger detectors and quarkonia detection in pp collisions. PhD thesis, University of Torino, 2008 [18] M. Gagliardi The ALICE Muon Spectrometer: trigger detectors and quarkonia detection in pp collisions. PhD thesis, University of Torino, 2008
Ringraziamenti
Approtto dellultima pagina di questa tesi per ringraziare le persone che pi u mi hanno aiutato a portare a termine questo mio lavoro. Innanzitutto un grazie al mio relatore, il prof. Ermanno Vercellin, che mi ha seguito e guidato durante tutta la durata della tesi. Un grazie molto speciale al dott.ssa Anna Piccotti e al dott. Alfredo Musso per la pazienza mostratami nel rispondere a tutte le mie domande. Un grazie al gruppo Pinot che mi ha accolto con simpatia in questi mesi di preparazione della tesi. Ringrazio di cuore Francesco Boss che mi ha seguito passo passo e che ha u trovato il tempo di aiutarmi in tutto! Grazie alla mia famiglia che mi ha sostenuto in questi cinque anni di studio e.... grazie a tutti i miei amici che rendono tutto migliore!!
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Tesi Di Laurea Commissioning With Cosmic Rays of The ALICE Muon Trigger System

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Tesi Di Laurea Commissioning With Cosmic Rays of The ALICE Muon Trigger System

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` UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TORINO ` FACOLTA DI SCIENZE MATEMATICHE, FISICHE E NATURALI CORSO DI LAUREA MAGISTRALE IN FISICA DELLE INTERAZIONI

Relatore: Prof. Ermanno Vercellin Controrelatore: Prof. Stefano Argir o

Candidato: Claudio Geuna

Anno Accademico 2008-2009

Physics at the ALICE experiment

CHAPTER 1. PHYSICS AT THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

Heavy Ion Collisions (AA)

CHAPTER 1. PHYSICS AT THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

The Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP)

Figure 1.1: The phase diagram of QCD

CHAPTER 1. PHYSICS AT THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 1. PHYSICS AT THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

Experimental probes of QGP formation

CHAPTER 1. PHYSICS AT THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

Proton-Proton collisions (pp)

A benchmark for heavy ion physics

CHAPTER 1. PHYSICS AT THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

The ALICE experiment

Overview of the ALICE detectors

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

Figure 2.1: Layout of the ALICE experiment

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

framework is a set of software tools that enables data processing

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

The Muon Spectrometer

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

Figure 2.4: Schematic 3D view of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

Figure 2.5: Schematic side view of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

Figure 2.6: Front Absorber

Tracking Chambers System

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

The ALICE Muon Trigger System

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 2. THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

RPCs for the ALICE Muon Trigger

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

Requirements for the ALICE Muon RPCs

RPC design and working principle

cluster-size is the number of contiguous strips red by a crossing particle.

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

Signal formation process and gas mixture

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER M 108 = xc 20

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

RPC Working Parameters

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

Gas mixtures: avalanche vs streamer

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

Characteristics of the ALICE Muon RPCs

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER

CHAPTER 3. RPCS FOR THE ALICE MUON TRIGGER