Frankfurt 2014 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 21: Instrumentierung

HK 21.2: Vortrag

Dienstag, 18. März 2014, 14:30–14:45, HZ 8

The RCU2: Readout Electronics Consolidation for the ALICE TPC in Run2 — •Attilio Tarantola for the ALICE collaboration — Institut für Kernphysik Frankfurt

The Time-Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main device for charged particle tracking and identification of the ALICE experiment at CERN. The Multi Wire Proportional Chambers on both endplates of the TPC contain segmented cathode planes with a total of 557 568 pads, which are read out by custom electronics. The sampling of the signals provides 3-D information of the trajectory of the particle tracks and their energy loss. The LHC is currently being upgraded, in order to increase energies and luminosities of the beams: in the next data taking period, Run2 (2015-2018), the data readout rate for the ALICE central barrel detectors is planned to increase to 400Hz for Pb-Pb collisions at low dead time, while a maximum event size of 70MB is foreseen for central collisions.

The present TPC readout control unit (RCU) is going to be replaced with a new readout system, RCU2, which will be able to achieve the new requirements in terms of data readout speed and radiation tolerance. The RCU2 board will interface the already existing ALICE data acquisition and trigger systems with the TPC Front End Cards. In this contribution we present the status of the RCU2 upgrade, the features of the new hardware components, the developed firmware as well as the selection of the radiation tolerant components and the employed fault tolerance techniques. (Work supported by BMBF and the Helmholtz Association).