Hot and Cold QCD White Paper from ALICE-USA: Input for 2023 U.S. Long Range Plan for Nuclear Science
The ALICE-USA collaboration presents its plans for the 2023 U.S. Long Range Plan for Nuclear Science.
nucl-ex↗
arXiv subjects
J. D. Mulligan
Publications and source records attributed to J. D. Mulligan.
ALICE Overwatch: Online monitoring and data quality assurance using HLT data
ALICE Overwatch is a project started in late 2015 to provide augmented online monitoring and data quality assurance utilizing time-stamped QA histograms produced by the ALICE High Level Trigger. The system receives the data via ZeroMQ, stores it for later review, enriches it with detector specific functionality, and visualizes it via a web application. These provided capabilities are complementary to the existing Data Quality Monitoring system. In addition to basic visualization, additional processing options are accessible to the user, including requests for data within a particular time range or reprocessing of a particular run with different processing parameters. For example, the first ten minutes of a particular run could be investigated for a transient hot trigger channel. Due to similarities between the Overwatch architecture and that which will be used for Quality Control (QC) in LHC Run 3 and beyond, Overwatch will also be utilized to develop and test various QC components during LHC Run 2. Some of the areas of QC development include a new trending and alarm framework. We report on the project's design, development, and status.
physics.ins-det↗
Combination of two Gas Electron Multipliers and a Micromegas as gain elements for a time projection chamber
We measured the properties of a novel combination of two Gas Electron Multipliers with a Micromegas for use as amplification devices in high-rate gaseous time projection chambers. The goal of this design is to minimize the buildup of space charge in the drift volume of such detectors in order to eliminate the standard gating grid and its resultant dead time, while preserving good tracking and particle identification performance. We measured the positive ion back-flow and energy resolution at various element gains and electric fields, using a variety of gases, and additionally studied crosstalk effects and discharge rates. At a gain of 2000, this configuration achieves an ion back-flow below 0.4% and an energy resolution better than $σ/\text{E}=12\%$ for $^{55}$Fe X-rays.
physics.ins-det↗
Simulations of a multi-layer extended gating grid
A novel idea to control ion back-flow in time projection chambers is to use a multi-layer extended gating grid to capture back-flowing ions at the expense of live time and electron transparency. In this initial study, I perform simulations of a four-layer grid for the ALICE and STAR time projection chambers, using $\text{Ne}-\text{CO}_{2}\;(90-10)$ and $\text{Ar}-\text{CH}_{4}\;(90-10)$ gas mixtures, respectively. I report the live time and electron transparency for both 90% and 99% ion back-flow suppression. Additionally, for the ALICE configuration I study several effects: using a mesh vs. wire-plane grid, including a magnetic field, and varying the over-voltage distribution in the gating region. For 90% ion back-flow suppression, I achieve 75% live time with 86% electron transparency for ALICE, and 95% live time with 83% electron transparency for STAR.
physics.ins-det↗