Bochum 2018 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 12: Instrumentation IV

HK 12.6: Talk

Monday, February 26, 2018, 18:00–18:15, Audimax H1

Implementation of the ALICE TRD triggers — •Guido Willems for the ALICE collaboration — Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and CERN

The Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) of ALICE is operated at high event inspection rates around 10 kHz and allows for processing the data of all particles detected in a collision event within a time window shorter than 6 µs. The processing involves the reconstruction of all particle tracks as well as the generation of trigger signals which are used to trigger the readout of other detectors in ALICE. A large number of Xilinx Virtex-4 FX100 FPGAs are combined and process the incoming data in parallel in order to achieve this performance.

This talk outlines how the detector with its online data processing infrastructure works and focuses on the trigger decision unit. Recently, it has been extended by a new trigger on light nuclei which is now already being used in production data taking. It significantly enhances the sample of events containing deuterons, tritons, Z=2 particles like helium and alpha as well as their corresponding antiparticles. The trigger is operated in pPb and pp collisions where these events are generally very rare.