A Nd:YAG laser was used to simulate charged particle tracks at known positions in the CERES Time Projection Chamber at the CERN SPS. The system was primarily developed to study the response of the readout electronics and to calibrate the electron drift velocity. Further applications were the determination of the gating grid transparency, the chamber position calibration, and long-term monitoring of drift properties of the gas in the detector.
The design, calibration, and performance of the first radial drift Time Projection Chamber (TPC) are presented. The TPC was built and installed at the CERES/NA45 experiment at the CERN SPS in the late nineties, with the objective to improve the momentum resolution of the spectrometer. The upgraded experiment took data twice, in 1999 and in 2000. After a detailed study of residual distortions a spatial resolution of 340 um in the azimuthal and 640 um in the radial direction was achieved, corresponding to a momentum resolution of Dp/p = sqrt{(1% * p/GeV)^2 + (2%)^2}.
The principles of the calibration of a time projection chamber with radioactive Krypton-83 are explained. The calculation of gain correction factors and the methods of obtaining a precise energy calibration are illustrated. The properties and advantages of \nuc{83m}{Kr} are summarized and compared to other radioactive calibration sources. It was shown that the Krypton calibration for the STAR FTPC is feasible and recommendable although the pad geometry of the FTPC causes a considerable deterioration of the measured spectrum due to only partially detected charge clusters.
A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) is the only experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) dedicated to the study of heavy ion collisions. The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main tracking detector covering the pseudo rapidity range $|η|< 0.9$. It is designed for a maximum multiplicity \dNdy = 8000. The aim of the laser system is to simulate ionizing tracks at predifined positions throughout the drift volume in order to monitor the TPC response to a known source. In particular, the alignment of the read-out chambers will be performed, and variations of the drift velocity due to dri…
During the year 2000 the CERES experiment, upgraded with a radial drift TPC, took a large data sample of Pb on Au collisions at 158 AGeV triggered on the 8% most central collisions. A very detailed calibration of the radial drift TPC was since completed. Preliminary results on $e^+e^-$ pairs and $ϕ$ mesons reconstructed in the $K^+K^-$ channel are presented.
The aim of this thesis was to perform the drift chamber calibration and charged particles 3d track reconstruction for the P349 antiproton polarization experiment. A dedicated procedures were designed, implemented and tested on the experimental data for the the D1 drift chamber. The calibration consisted of the drift time offsets determination, estimation of the initial drift time - space relations by means of the homogeneous irradiation method and the iterative procedure for the time - space relations optimization. Calibration curves for all wire planes of the detector were determined. The obt…
The study of two-particle azimuthal correlations at high transverse momentum has become an important tool to investigate the interaction of hard partons with the medium formed in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. At SPS energies, pioneering studies by the CERES collaboration indicated a significant modification of the away-side structure in central collisions. Here we present new results emerging from the analysis of the year 2000 data set recorded with the CERES Time-Projection Chamber, which provides excellent tracking efficiency and significantly improved momentum determination.
To help constrain the algorithms used in reconstructing high-energy muon events incident on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), a muon tracking system was installed. The system consisted of four planes of wire chambers, which were triggered by scintillator panels. The system was integrated with SNO's main data acquisition system and took data for a total of 95 live days. Using cosmic-ray events reconstructed in both the wire chambers and in SNO's water Cherenkov detector, the external muon tracking system was able to constrain the uncertainty on the muon direction to better than 0.6 degree…
The Time Projection Chamber of the ALICE Experiment has been installed in the experimental setup in the underground area at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The Alice TPC ReadOut (ALTRO) chip implements intelligent signal processing on the Front-End-Electronics. During the years of 2007 and 2008 commissioning and calibration of the TPC have been carried out with cosmic rays, radioactive Krypton isotopes and with tracks produced by a UV laser system. In addition to these in this publication we present first results on energy loss measurements and on the momentum resolution.
A calibration source employing 8Li (t_1/2 = 0.838s) has been developed for use with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO). This source creates a spectrum of beta particles with an energy range similar to that of the SNO 8B solar neutrino signal. The source is used to test the SNO detector's energy response, position reconstruction and data reduction algorithms. The 8Li isotope is created using a deuterium-tritium neutron generator in conjunction with a 11B target, and is carried to a decay chamber using a gas/aerosol transport system. The decay chamber detects prompt alpha particles by gas sc…
We describe the first demonstration of a sub-keV electron recoil energy threshold in a dual-phase liquid argon time projection chamber. This is an important step in an effort to develop a detector capable of identifying the ionization signal resulting from nuclear recoils with energies of order a few keV and below. We obtained this result by observing the peaks in the energy spectrum at 2.82 keV and 0.27 keV, following the K- and L-shell electron capture decay of Ar-37, respectively. The Ar-37 source preparation is described in detail, since it enables calibration that may also prove useful in…
The Central Drift Chamber is a straw-tube wire chamber of cylindrical structure located surrounding the target inside the bore of the GlueX spectrometer solenoid. Its purpose is to detect and track charged particles with momenta as low as 0.25 GeV/c as well as to identify low-momentum protons via energy loss. The construction of the detector is described and its operation and calibration are discussed in detail. The design goal of 150 microns in position resolution has been reached.
Synchrotron radiation with the characteristic of high brilliance, high level of polarization, high collimation, low emittance and wide tunability in energy has been used as a standard source in metrology(1, 2). For a decade, lots of calibration work have been done on 4B7A in Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility (BSRF) (3, 4). For the calibration process, a high-precision online monitor is indispensable. To control the uncertainty under 0.1%, we studied different sizes parallel ion chambers with rare-gas and used different collecting methods to monitor the x-ray intensity of the beamline. Two…
The T2K experiment is designed to study neutrino oscillation properties by directing a high intensity neutrino beam produced at J-PARC in Tokai, Japan, towards the large Super-Kamiokande detector located 295 km away, in Kamioka, Japan. The experiment includes a sophisticated near detector complex, 280 m downstream of the neutrino production target in order to measure the properties of the neutrino beam and to better understand neutrino interactions at the energy scale below a few GeV. A key element of the near detectors is the ND280 tracker, consisting of two active scintillator-bar target sys…
A new Radial Time Projection Chamber (RTPC) was developed at the Jefferson Laboratory to track low-energy nuclear recoils for the purpose of measuring exclusive nuclear reactions, such as coherent Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering and coherent meson production off $^4$He. In such processes, the $^4$He nucleus remains intact in the final state, however the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) cannot track the low energy $α$ particles. In 2009, we carried out measurements using the CLAS spectrometer supplemented by the RTPC positioned directly around a gaseous $^4$He target, allowing a det…
The AI for Experimental Controls project is developing an AI system to control and calibrate detector systems located at Jefferson Laboratory. Currently, calibrations are performed offline and require significant time and attention from experts. This work would reduce the amount of data and the amount of time spent calibrating in an offline setting. The first use case involves the Central Drift Chamber (CDC) located inside the GlueX spectrometer in Hall D. We use a combination of environmental and experimental data, such as atmospheric pressure, gas temperature, and the flux of incident partic…
