1. 25th ALICE RRB J. Schukraft
Collaboration News
ALICE Status
Hardware status
Commissioning activities
Planning
CERN-RRB
12 Nov 2008
25th ALICE RRB J. Schukraft

2. Collaboration News Elections/Nominations New Institutes
Houston (USA) EMCAL, Computing
Institutes leaving
BARC Mumbai (India) leaving ALICE
associate member, completed its technical contribution to the PMD electronics
Ongoing discussions
Comsats, Pinstec (Pakistan) Physics, computing
Elections/Nominations
Spokesperson: JS re-elected until end 2010
Deputy Spokesperson, P. Kuijer (NIKHEF/Utrecht), 2 years ( )
Resource Coordinator: C. Decosse (CERN) (J. de Groot decided to step down end 2008)
Special thanks to J. de Groot, first (and only) RC since 1996
Run Coordinator: J. Rak (Jyvaskyula) year (2009)
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3. Funding UK : Continued support from STFC for ALICE
ALICE & STAR groups merged, will apply at next funding round for Nuclear Physics grant.
CERN: ‘White paper money’
CERN share of 2.5 MCHF has been agreed to complete the ALICE detector
restore full DAQ capacity, complete TRD/EMCAL services & infrastructure,
repay loan to CF for ZDC vacuum chamber
additional contributions received (or requested) from other FA
MCHF
TRD
8.0
5 MEUR, contribution from Germany, agreed early 2006
EMCal
10.0
Estimated CORE equivalent, agreed by US-DOE December 2007.
1.6
1 MEUR, France, IN2P3, agreed
1 MEUR, Italy, INFN, 2008 fraction agreed
C/F, C&I
0.2
Extra contribution (.249 MCHF, paid 2007) from France IN2P3
PHOS
15.0
Extra funds for two PHOS modules requested (Russia);
610 kCHF allocated in 2008 to date
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4. ALICE Detector Installation mid 2008
Complete:
ITS, TPC, TOF, HMPID,
FMD, T0, V0, ZDC,
Muon arm, Acorde
Partial installation:
1/5 PHOS
4/18 TRD
9/48 PMD
0/6 EMCAL
~ 40% DAQ/HLT
ALICE Status
Installation targets met by mid 2008
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5. 24 April: Insertion of final TOF super module
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6. Installation of final muon chamber
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7. Installation 1st PHOS module
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8. Formal end of ALICE installation July 2008
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9. Data Taking & Commissioning
Comissioning runs (24/7)
Cosmics I (2 weeks, Dec 2007)
local (individual detectors) and start of global (several detectors) commissioning
Cosmics II (3 weeks, Febr/Mar 2008)
local/global commissioning, first few days of alignment ‘test’ run, magnet commissioning
TPC was turned off after ~ 1 week (Drift HV instability, now understood & corrected)
Cosmics III (since 5 May 2008 continuous operation 24/7)
global commissioning, calibration & alignment production runs
Injection tests
TI2 dump in June , injection tests August, first circulating beam September
observed very high particle fluxes during dumps and even during injection through ALICE
10’s to 1000’s of particles/cm2 with beam screens in LHC and/or TI2
decided to switch off all sensitive detectors during injection
SPD, V0 always on (trigger),
SSD, SDD, FMD, T0, HMPID, muon trigger occasionally
(beam was useful only for a subset of detectors !)
> 6 months 24/7 running
~ 6700 shifts (~ 30 MY) +
2800 ‘on call’
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10. Injection tests SPD hits versus bunch intensity (beam through ALICE)
FMD event display
(1 bunch through ALICE, > hits)
FMD hits versus SPD hits
(beam through ALICE)
SPD/SSD, Sunday, 15.6
Dump on TED
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11. First beam 10th September
SPD hits on , shortly after 9 am
V0 hits on , shortly after 9 am
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12. Luminosity monitor (V0)
Double turn, beam 1 back at point 2 !
Single turn
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13. Auto-correlation for SPD trigger, with multi-turn correlations
Beam pick-up T0
SPD V0
Auto-correlation for SPD trigger,
with multi-turn correlations
(3564 bunch crossings)
Trigger timing (before alignment) versus bunch number
single shot
for SPD, V0, beam-pickup BPTX, T0 triggers
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14. First interactions 12th September
Circulating beam 2:
stray particle causing an interaction in the ITS
ITS tracks on
7 reconstructed tracks, common vertex
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15. TPC Commissioning TPC up and running since end 2007
chamber+FC, gas system, cooling, FEE, Laser, DCS, DAQ, HLT,…
noise reduction: modify PS (some occasional excess noise remains in outer parts)
replaced several faulty electronics components (FEE, RCU, ..)
some IROC decoupling capacitors show leakage after months of operation
already several replaced, currently 2 ‘weak’ left + 2 IROCs not operational
difficult or no access to parts of the TPC => modify cabling during shutdown
TDR: s ~ 1
measured:
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16. TPC Calibration Gain, drift velocity, ExB, alignment,…
Krypton Gain Calibration
Gain, drift velocity, ExB, alignment,…
Laser, Cosmics, Krypton, drift velocity monitor, gas composition, T/P sensors ..
ExB scan
(Laser tracks)
Drift velocity from Laser
(~ 2x10-4)
Krypton Calibration
chamber gain variation
(s ~ 8%)
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17. TPC Performance First preliminary results from cosmics
Momentum
Resolution
(uncalibrated)
First preliminary results from cosmics
dE/dx resolution (PPR goal: ~ 5.5%)
< 6%
pt resolution (PPR goal: ~ 10 GeV)
~ 10 GeV w/o calibration
Particle
Identification
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18. Silicon: ITS & FMD status
all silicon detectors fully commissioned (Det.,DAQ, DCS, cooling, ..)
pixel trigger worked ‘out of the box’ and was heavily used
individual bad/noisy channels ~ within specs (<0.15% SPD, FMD, 1.5% SSD, 3% SDD)
lost some modules/half-ladders (tracking is sufficiently redundant, so physics impact is minor)
(ITS detectors could only be fully tested after cabling on miniframe, i.e. w/o access)
SPD: 12.5% half-staves (2 connection, 13 insufficient cooling flow)
plan to improve flow regulation for individual circuits next WS
SDD: 5% modules (few can be recovered during shutdown)
SSD: 3.8% modules, 9% half-ladders
mostly Sintef ladders which developed excessive bias current (8/22)
FMD: S/N ~ 30
FMD3-o
SSD
SSD: S/N ~ 40
FMD2-o
FMD 1-i
FMD 2-i
FMD 3-i
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19. ALICE Inner Tracking System: Alignment with Cosmics
Silicon Pixel Detector (SPD):
~10M channels
240 sensitive vol. (60 ladders)‏
Silicon Drift Detector (SDD):
~133k channels
260 sensitive vol. (36 ladders)‏
Silicon Strip Detector (SSD):
~2.6M channels
1698 sensitive vol. (72 ladders)‏
ITS total: 2.2k alignable sensitive volumes  13k degrees of freedom
Alignment using tracks and Millepede program in a hierarchical approach
~50k cosmic  for alignment collected since end of May (~0.1 Hz), using Pixel trigger
ITS Event display
Distribution of clusters in the 6 layers

20. ALICE Inner Tracking System: Alignment with Cosmics
Preliminary results for SPD (Pixels, ~ 80% prel. aligned):
Residual misalignment < 10 m (detector resolution = 12 m in r )
SSD & SDD, as well as ITS/TPC alignment has started (smaller coverage)
Track-to-“extra clusters” distance
in transv. plane (sensor overlap)
Track-to-track (top vs bottom)
distance in transv. plane
before
alignment
before
alignment
after
alignment
after
alignment
= 55 m (vs 40 m in simulation
without misalignment)‏
= 21 m (vs 15 m in simul. without misalignment)‏

21. Other Detectors
TOF: 2/3 fully commissioned (3 finishing gas tests, several missing DC-DC converters)
TOF trigger works very well (noise factor 2 better than in tests)
TRD: 4 SM’s installed (2 final ones), noise and L1 trigger ok
HMPID: fully commissioned, noise at specs
PHOS: 1 module fully commissioned, trigger com. ongoing
occasional noise pickup (depends on the day..)
Muon tracking: ~ 70% commissioned, noise problem cured in all but station 3
Muon trigger, V0, T0, ACORDE, ZDC: all up and running
TRD cosmic
HMPID cosmic event
(no calib/slewing, offset correction etc..)
Oct 08
Jul 08
TOF raw spectra
(no calib/slewing, offset correction etc..)
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22. Online Continuous online operation since March (24/7)
DAQ: 40% HW installed, stable operation up to 500 MB/s transfer, data taking > 3 kHz
complete HW for 2009
DCS/ECS: all essential functionality operational, continuous improvement in functionality
some problems encountered with scalability (mostly resolved)
CTP: some problems with spurious triggers resolved, running well
HLT: 500 CPU’s, very successful operation (online reconstruction, data reduction)
complete HW in 2009
Aggregated cumulative time
in the global partition
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23. DAQ: Global Partitions
Number of detectors in the global partition
Now also runs with large number of detectors run stable over hours with realistic trigger sequences !
(Useful cosmic data taking done for subsets of detectors working with different triggers)
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24. Offline & Physics ‘commissioning’
exercise data transfer to T0/T1, prompt reconstruction, prompt calibration, data Q/A
Concentrating on early physics at 900 GeV and 10 TeV
global event features, pt spectra, particle rations, baryon transport, ….
detailed trigger & data taking scenario elaborated
fast calibration/alignment/reconstruction prepared
daily meetings of ‘first physics task force’ to exercising analysis until mid Sept.
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25. Computing Computing Resources (updated after CRSG review)
ALICE deficit in 2009 : ~ 25 CPU% , 60% Disk (error found by CRSG), 50% Tape
‘optimistic running scenario’ 107 s, but ALICE pp data depends much less on it !
need 109 pp MB events/year, i.e. Hz or Hz
addressing the shortfall
adding resources: partially successful and ongoing
in discussion with a number of specific partners
redistribution of existing resources between experiments (integral LHC resources much more adequate than differential distribution)
CRSG: ‘A very limited degree of redistribution of resources may be advisable in 2009’
‘living with less’: scenarios & physics impact under discussion with LHCC
a modest shortfall may be accommodated with a modest loss of physics …
24/10/ rd RRB J. Schukraft
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26. Planning Until 12 October Medium term (until LHC restart in 2009)
continue cosmic running & consolidation of online software
Medium term (until LHC restart in 2009)
‘shutdown mode’, start with activities planned for winter shutdown
re-arrange cabling on mini-frame (ITS,TPC) to allow better access to electronics
major activity, requiring > 4 months of work both underground & surface
detector consolidation TPC capacitors; recover some ITS modules, improve SPD cooling, …
detector installation (TRD, PHOS, PMD, EMCAL), …
3 PHOS, 6-8 TRD modules, 2 EMCAL modules, complete PMD
Long term: complete detector
PMD (2008), DAQ/HLT(2009),TRD (2009), PHOS (2010/11), EMCAL (2010/11)
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27. Summary Installation: Commissioning and initial calibration/alignment
met all installation goals by mid 2008
Commissioning and initial calibration/alignment
went rather well, sometimes even better than expected (e.g. TPC, SPD alignment + trigger)
some (mostly minor) hickups / problems (noise, lost channels) / bug fixing
to be improved:
access to TPC for repairs/FEE exchanges
cooling flow of SPD
Detector performance
better – within - very close to specs (at least as far as could be verified with cosmics)
After > 15 years of designing & constructing ALICE
we do have a working experiment ready for physics.
Thanks to all the Funding Agencies who have
made this possible with their strong support over 1½ decades !
12/11/ th RRB J. Schukraft