A Large Ion Collider Experiment

A Large Ion Collider Experiment

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is one of the six detector experiments being constructed at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is optimized to study heavy ion collisions. Pb-Pb nuclei collisions will be studied at a centre of mass energy of 5.5 TeV per nucleon. The resulting temperature and energy density are expected to be large enough to generate a quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter wherein quarks and gluons are deconfined.

Inner Tracking System

The Inner Tracking System (ITS) consists of six cylindrical layers of silicon detectors. The layers surround the collision point and measure the properties of the emerging particles, pin-pointing their positions to a fraction of a millimetre. The ITS will recognize particles containing heavy quarks by identifying the points at which they decay.

ITS layers (counting from the interaction point):
* 2 layers of SPD (Silicon Pixel Detector),
* 2 layers of SDD (Silicon Drift Detector),
* 2 layers of SSD (Silicon Strip Detector).

Time Projection Chamber

The ALICE Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main particle tracking device in ALICE. Charged particles crossing the gas of the TPC ionize the gas atoms along their path, liberating electrons that drift towards the end plates of the detector. An avalanche effect in the vicinity of the anode wires strung in the readout, will give the necessary signal amplification. The positive ions created in the avalanche will induce a positive current signal on the pad plane. The readout is done by the 570 312 pads that form the cathode plane of the multi-wire proportional chambers (MWPC) located at the end plates. This gives the r and phi coordinates. The last coordinate, z, is given by the drift time.

Transition Radiation Detector

Electrons and positrons can be discriminated from other charged particles using the emission of transition radiation, X-rays emitted when the particles cross many layers of thin materials. To develop such a Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) for ALICE many detector prototypes were tested in mixed beams of pions and electrons.

Time of Flight

Charged particles are identified in ALICE by Time-Of-Flight (TOF); heavier particles are slower and so take longer to reach the outer layers of the detector. For its TOF system ALICE uses detectors called Multigap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPC). There are approximately 160 000 MRPC pads with time resolution of about 100 ps distributed over the large surface of 150 square meters. Using the tracking information from other detectors every track firing a sensor is identified.

Photon Spectrometer

The Photon Spectrometer (PHOS) is designed to measure the temperature of collisions by detecting photons emerging from them. It will be made of lead tungstate crystals. When high energy photons strike lead tungstate, they make it glow, or scintillate, and this glow can be measured. Lead tungstate is extremely dense (denser than iron), stopping most photons that reach it.

High Momentum Particle Identification Detector

The High Momentum Particle Identification Detector (HMPID) is a RICH detector to determine the speed of particles beyond the momentum range available through energy loss (in ITS and TPC, "p" = 600 MeV) and through time-of-flight measurements (in TOF, "p" = 1.2–1.4 GeV). Its momentum range is up to 3 GeV for pion/kaon discrimination and up to 5 GeV for kaon/proton discrimination. It is the world's largest caesium iodide RICH detector, with an active area of 11 m². A prototype was successfully tested at CERN in 1997 and currently takes data at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US.

Muon spectrometer

The muon spectrometer measures pairs of muons, in particular those coming from the decays of J/ψ and Upsilon particles. Tracking chambers to detect the muons and reconstruct their trajectories will be made from a special composite material, which is highly rigid but very thin. A set of resistive plate chambers (RPC) will act as a triggering device.

Forward Multiplicity Detectors

The Forward Multiplicity Detector (FMD) consist of 5 large silicon discs with each 10 240 individual detector channels to measure the charged particles emitted at small angles relative to the beam. The forward detectors also comprise the main trigger detectors for timing (T0) and for collision centrality (V0). Another important forward detector in ALICE is the Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD). This is a pre-shower detector which measures the multiplicity and spatial distribution of photons produced in the collisions.

Electro-Magnetic Calorimeter

The Electro-Magnetic Calorimeter (EM-Cal) will add greatly to the high momentum particle measurement capabilities of ALICE.

External links

* [http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html Official ALICE Public Webpage] at CERN
* [http://www.uslhc.us/What_is_the_LHC/Experiments/ALICE ALICE section on US/LHC Website]
* [http://petermccready.com/portfolio/07041606.html ALICE photography panorama]
* [http://petermccready.com/portfolio/07041607.html Photography panorama of ALICE detector center]
* (Full design documentation)


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • A Large Ion Collider Experiment — ALICE (expérience) Pour les articles homonymes, voir Alice. ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment : expérience sur un grand collisionneur …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Large Hadron Collider — LHC redirects here. For other uses, see LHC (disambiguation). Coordinates: 46°14′N 06°03′E / 46.233°N 6.05°E / 46.233; 6.05 …   Wikipedia

  • Large Hadron Collider — (LHC) Anordnung der verschiedenen Beschleuniger und Detektoren des LHC Detektoren des LHC ATLAS CMS LHCb …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Safety of particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider — Concerns have been raised in the media, on the Internet and through the law courts about the safety of the particle physics experiments planned to take place at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world s largest and most powerful particle… …   Wikipedia

  • Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider — Hadron colliders Caption=The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Some of the superconducting magnets were manufactured by Northrop Grumman Corp. at Bethpage, New York. Note especially the second, independent ring… …   Wikipedia

  • Sécurité des collisions de particules au Large Hadron Collider — Une collision de particules simulée dans le LHC Les médias, l internet et les tribunaux se sont fait l écho de préoccupations au sujet de la sécurité des expériences sur la physique des particules prévues dans le Large Hadron Collider (LHC), le… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • MoEDAL experiment — Large Hadron Collider (LHC) LHC experiments ATLAS A Toroidal LHC Apparatus CMS Compact Muon Solenoid LHCb LHC beauty …   Wikipedia

  • ATLAS experiment — ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is one of the six particle detector experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, LHCb, and LHCf) constructed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a new particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear… …   Wikipedia

  • First Beam Day — Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Anordnung der verschiedenen Beschleuniger und Detektoren des LHC Detektoren des LHC ATLAS A Toroidal LHC Apparatus …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Großer Hadronen-Speicherring — Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Anordnung der verschiedenen Beschleuniger und Detektoren des LHC Detektoren des LHC ATLAS A Toroidal LHC Apparatus …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”