THE ALICE TPC

JOACHIM BAECHLER
European Organization for Nuclear Research,
CERN, Department of Physics
1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland

for the ALICE collaboration

The TPC is the main tracking detector in the central region of the ALICE experiment.
This paper describes the main components of the ALICE TPC and addresses the specific
technological challenges. Furthermore, the results of comprehensive system tests are
summarized.

1. Introduction

ALICE [1] is one of the four experiments presently under construction for the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva.
ALICE is a general-purpose heavy-ion experiment designed to study the
physics of strongly interacting nuclear matter and the quark-gluon plasma in
nucleus-nucleus collisions. At a maximum cms energy of 5.5 TeV per nucleon
in Pb-Pb collisions, up to 8000 charged particles per unit rapidity are produced
within a central collision.
Owing to the enormous particle multiplicity per event, very specific
requirements are made on the performance of the detectors, the electronics and
the data acquisition. The ALICE TPC, operated in a solenoid of 0.5 T, is the
main detector of the ALICE experiment for tracking, momentum measurement
and particle identification of charged particles. In conjunction with the
Transition Radiation Detector (TRD), the Inner Tracking System (ITS),
Cherenkov counters (HMPID) and Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers for time
of flight (TOF), the TPC will provide identification of leptonic and hadronic
particles in the momentum range from 0.5 to 10 GeV/c.

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The specific requirements on the TPC for hadronic physics are :

Good two track separation
dE/dx resolution of better than 10%
Track matching with 85-95% efficiency, using inner and outer
detectors.

In combination with the ITS and the TRD, the TPC needs to satisfy the
following criteria for electron physics:

Track finding efficiency for tracks with pt > 1GeV/c of > 90% .
Momentum resolution for electrons of 2 % with a momentum
of ~ 4GeV/c.
Rate capability for central collisions to be at least 200Hz.

1.1. TPC Main Components

The ALICE TPC is composed of a cylindrical gas volume (barrel), divided
into two half volumes of equal size, separated by a 30m thick HV electrode to
generate the drift field. It has an inner radius of about 80 cm and an outer radius
of about 280 cm, with an overall length of 500 cm in the beam direction
(Figures1 and 2). At both ends of the barrel, conventional multi-wire
proportional chambers with pad readout are mounted into end plates with 18
trapezoidal sectors each.

Figure 1. Layout of the ALICE TPC showing the central electrode, the field cage and the end plates
supporting the readout chambers.
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The front-end (FE) electronic cards with an optical interface to the DAQ are
connected to the backplane of the readout chambers via ~8cm long flat Kapton
cables.

Figure 2. Photography of the ALICE TPC positioned in the clean room with readout chambers
mounted, in preparation for electronics installation.

1.2. Field Cage

To keep the structural material (mass) at a minimum, the field cage is
composed of two outer cylinders (outer containment vessel, outer field cage
vessel) and two inner cylinders (inner field cage vessel, inner containment
vessel). The drift gas is confined in the outer and inner field cage vessel; the
volume created between the containment- and field cage vessels is filled with
CO2 and serves as an electrical insulator. At the center of the of the field cage
the central electrode of 30m thickness is strung and mechanically supported by
the outer and inner field cage cylinders, to generate the drift field in the two half
volumes. Two opposite axial potential degraders with potential strips create a
uniform drift field on either side of the central electrode. A unique feature of
this field cage is the method to remove the potential strips from the field cage
surface and wind them instead around support rods held away from the surface.
This avoids instabilities and discharges over the huge surface of the field cage
cylinder walls.
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In total, 18 such axial rods, in line with the 18 sectors of the endplate,
support the potential strips over a length of 250 cm in either direction. This is
shown in Figures 3 and 4.

Figures 3 and 4. TPC field cage prototype with the six support rods and potential strips (left), and the
ALICE TPC field cage (right) with 18 support rods plus strips; the TPC is mounted vertically on one
endplate with an opening for a readout chamber.

To ensure minimal multiple scattering and low secondary particle

production, the material budget of the TPC field cage components is kept as low
as possible. Furthermore, the oxygen content of the drift gas has to be
maintained below 5ppm in order to assure good detector efficiency.
Consequently, we use, wherever possible, only low-mass composite material
providing sufficient mechanical rigidity and the required leak tightness. After
assembly, the field cage was leak-tested with dummy chambers in the end
plates. An oxygen level of 5ppm was measured with one volume exchange of
gas per day.
It is a major challenge to guarantee the mechanical stability and mounting
precision of 250m for the central electrode and the readout planes within the
entire assembly. With detailed photogrammetry, before and after chamber
installation, it was shown that the entire detector stayed within the required
mechanical tolerances.

1.3. Readout Chambers

The ALICE TPC readout [1] is based on conventional multi-wire
proportional counters with cathode pad readout. The segmentation of the
readout pad plane was chosen to optimize, in the high multiplicity environment
of central Pb-Pb collisions, the momentum and dE/dx resolution. The radial
dependence of the track density led to two different types of readout chambers
and a radial segmentation of the readout plane. The active area varies radially
from 84.1 to 132.1 cm and from 134.6 to 246.6 cm for the inner and outer
chamber, respectively. The total active area is about 32.5 m2. The readout
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chambers are made of standard wire planes, i.e. a grid of anode wires above the
pad plane, followed by a cathode plane and gating wire plane facing the drift
volume. To account for the different pad sizes chosen, the wire geometry is
different for the inner and outer readout chambers. The general wire layout was
tuned with Garfield (electrostatic simulation program [2]) to obtain the
maximum charge coupling to the pads. As a consequence, the field wires
between the anode wires were suppressed. The wire pad geometry was
optimized [2] based on the specific event topology of the particle spectra and
densities as they are expected to occur in central Pb-Pb collision. This
optimization procedure led to three different pad sizes of 4 x 7.5 mm2 in the
inner readout chambers and 6 x 10 mm2 and 6 x 15mm2 in the outer readout
chambers.

1.4. Gas Mixture

The requirements on momentum and position resolution in the high
multiplicity environment, as well as on minimum interaction processes inside
the detector, determined the choice of gas for the ALICE TPC.

Figure 4. Comparison of gas gain as a function of the anode wire voltage for a Ne-CO2 and a Ne-
CO2-N2 gas mixture. The N2 admixture allows a stable operation with a higher gain.

The Ne-CO2 (90%-10%) mixture provides low diffusion, low Z and large
ion mobility. It was therefore chosen as the optimum gas mixture for our
application. From further optimization work [3] it was found that a small
addition of nitrogen (to improve quenching) to the Ne-CO2 gas, results in higher
operational stability of the readout chamber at the expense of a tolerable
reduction in drift speed for constant E/p (Figure 4).
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The physics results presented here were obtained with a Ne-CO2-N2

(85.7-9.5-4.8) mixture. Unfortunately, the drift velocities in both the Ne-CO2
and Ne-CO2-N2 gas mixtures are not saturated at E-fields of 400 V/cm.
Therefore, small variations in temperature and gas mixture have a significant
bearing on the drift velocity and herewith produce distortions in the space
coordinates. To limit these distortions to the intrinsic space resolution of the
TPC of < 1000m (limited by diffusion) the temperature gradient [4] needs to
be smaller than 0.1K. These constraints require that the TPC be operated at high
drift fields of > 400V/cm to achieve acceptable drift times of 88s. Therefore,
the HV on the central electrode is 100 kV.

1.5. Front-End Electronics

The front-end electronics [5] has to read out the charge detected by the
570132 pads from the cathode plane of the readout chambers. Each single pad is
red out by a charge sensitive preamp/shaper, a 10-bit 10 MHz low power ADC,
and an ASIC that contains a digital filter for tail cancellation and baseline
subtraction as well as zero-suppression circuits and a multi event buffer. The
charge induced on a single pad is amplified and integrated via a low input
impedance amplifier. The continuously sensitive charge amplifier is followed by
a semi-gaussian pulse shaper of second order (Figure 5). The output of the
amplifier/shaper chip is fed into the ALICE TPC Read Out (ALTRO) chip
containing 16 channels. Upon arrival of the first level trigger the data stream is
stored in a memory. Once the second level trigger (accept or reject) is
received, the latest data stream will either be frozen in the data memory, until its
complete readout has taken place, or discarded.

Figure 5. Schematic of the ALICE TPC readout electronics

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The ALTRO chip contains 16 times the TSA 1001 ADC from ST
Microelectronics in the form of 8 ADC IP blocks. This ADC has differential
inputs and can work up to a clock frequency of 20 MHz with a resolution of 10
bits, while consuming only 12 mW. After digitization a Baseline Correction
Unit removes systematic perturbations of the baseline by subtracting a pattern
stored in memory.
Between triggers, a self-calibration feature can correct any baseline shifts
due to temperature shifts or low frequency perturbations. The tail cancellation
filter is a three-stage IIR digital filter that removes the long complex tail of the
detector signal, thus narrowing the charge clusters to improve identification. It
also removes the undershoot that typically distorts the signal amplitude when
pile-up occurs. A second correction of the baseline is performed based on the
moving average of the samples that fall within a certain acceptance window.
The algorithm removes non-systematic perturbations of the baseline. Zero
suppression finally removes all the data that is below a certain threshold, except
for a specified number of pre- and post-samples around each peak.

1.6. TPC Test Facility

We have set up a comprehensive test facility in which every individual
component of the ALICE TPC can be tested, either separately or jointly with
other parts of the detector system. A cosmic ray scintillator array allowed to
trigger on single particles or on cosmic showers. Figure 6 shows the signals
generated on a single pad by a cosmic shower event and the effect of the
ALTRO filter on the baseline. Since the local occupancy is similar to that in
global central Pb-Pb collisions a detailed study and optimization of the baseline
filters could be performed.
In spring 2004, a final integral test was performed in the PS-T10 test
beam facility at CERN. An inner readout chamber (IROC) with the final
electronics DAQ chain was operated using the newly proposed gas mixture.
The purpose of this test was to check the performance of the detector in
combination with the entire readout chain, including the readout software.
Thanks to the smooth and stable operation of the complete system, we were able
to extract from the data the Bethe-Bloch-curve in a momentum range from 1.0
up to 7GeV/c.
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Figure 6: High-multiplicity cosmic ray event in the prototype TPC. Signal on a single pad, before
ALTRO action (upper), and after ALTRO action (lower).

Because of the high performance DAQ system with a data throughput of

100 MB/s it was possible to take events even without zero suppression allowing
the study of the original signal characteristics with sufficient statistics. In total
we have accumulated about 6000 non-zero suppressed events for each
momentum setting.
r (m)

650

600

550

500

450

400

350

300
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Ldrift (cm)

Figure 7: Space point resolution in the pad plane (x-y) as a function of drift length.
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z (m)
800

700

600

500

400

300
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Ldrift (cm)

Figure 8: Space point resolution in the z direction (drift direction) as a function of drift distance.

Furthermore, we have successfully tested the ALTRO baseline restoration

algorithm and could compare online-corrected data with uncorrected ones and
hence prove the reliability of the online data reduction. The space resolution in
the pad plane (x-y) and the drift direction (z) is shown in Figures 7 and 8,
respectively.

Figure 9. dE/dx beam data: Triangles correspond to measurements with the three-component mixture
Ne-CO2-N2. The solid line is the mean energy loss curve (for Ar-CH4 (90/10) [1]), superimposed on
the data.
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The results of the dE/dx measurements obtained in 2004 with the new
three-component gas mixture Ne-CO2-N2 (85.7-9.5-4.8) during the test beam
run at CERN are shown in Figure 9.

Conclusions
The ALICE TPC was designed to cope with the extreme instantaneous
particle densities produced in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. Although
conventional in its concept, this detector system incorporates innovative and
state of the art technologies, from the mechanical structure to the readout and
data processing chain. Carefully optimized components and extensive test
programs performed in parallel with production are to ensure that the TPC can
be operated in a stable and safe mode.
Integral leak tests with argon, for example, have demonstrated the excellent
gas tightness of the entire field cage system allowing the running of the TPC
with less than 5ppm oxygen at nominal gas flow. On the other hand, extensive
surveys of the TPC after chamber installation showed mechanical tolerances of
the field cage elements being below 200m with respect to the readout
chambers.
The integral tests performed in 2004 with the TPC system demonstrated
that the complete electronics and DAQ chain, in combination with an Inner
Readout Chamber, work according to specification [6]. Furthermore, the dE/dx
curve taken over an extensive momentum range was derived from the newly
proposed three-component gas mixture Ne-CO2-N2.
The dE/dx resolution was found to be better than 9% for the inner readout
chamber, the position resolution in the pad- and drift direction confirmed the
design values.
The comparison of the measured energy loss [6] with the predictions from
the models developed by Bichsel [7] is still underway. The understanding
thereof could potentially lead to an improvement of the particle identification
capability of the TPC.
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References
1. ALICE Collaboration, ALICE TDR 7, CERN/LHCC 2000-001

2. R. Veenhof, Calculations for the ALICE TPC Read-Out,

http://rjd.home.cern.ch/rjd/Alice/

3. C. Garabatos, The ALICE TPC , Proc. 10th International Vienna

Conference on Instrumentation, Vienna, Austria, NIM in physics research,
Section A, Accelerators, Spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment 531
(1):197-200.

4. T. C. Meyer (ALICE collaboration) 2004, Proc. Of the 42nd Workshop of the

INFN ELOISATRON Project , Innovative Detectors For Super-Colliders, Erice,
Italy, 28 Sept -4 Oct 2003.

5. L. Musa et al., The ALICE TPC Front End Electronics, Proc. of the IEEE
Nuclear Science Symposium, October 2003, Portland

6. P. Christiansen et al.,``Performance Test of the ALICE TPC IROC Module at

the PS'', ALICE-INT-2005-029.

7. H. Bichsel, Particle identification at STAR-TPC with ionization

measurements, prepared for 8th International Conference on Advanced
Technology and Particle Physics (ICATPP 2003): Astroparticle, Particle, Space
Physics, Detectors and Medical Physics Applications, Como, Italy,
6-10 Oct. 2003.