title: Exploring the performance limits of the ALICE Time Projection Chamber and Transition Radiation Detector for measuring identified hadron production at the LHC
creator: Lu, Xianguo
subject: 530
subject: 530 Physics
description: The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) and Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) are the  main tracking and particle identification devices in the ALICE experiment at the CERN  LHC. This thesis studies aspects of their performance beyond the original designs. This  includes extending the TPC momentum measurement for cosmic rays to sub-TeV scale,  investigating a robust identification method for electrons and hadrons by the TRD, and  developing new approaches to characterize the TPC and TRD signals. These studies lead  to an intriguing observation of the transition radiation from sub-TeV cosmic muons, and  a universal method -- the TPC coherent fit -- to extract yields of different particle species  with momentum from 0.5 to above 20 GeV/c.    With the TPC coherent fit, transverse momentum spectra (0.6 < pt < 20 GeV/c) of pions,  kaons and protons at mid-rapidity (|y|<~0.8) in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 and 7 TeV and  Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 2.76 TeV at the LHC are measured. In this unified approach  both the anomalous enhancement of the proton-to-pion ratio at moderate pt (2-8 GeV/c)  (the so-called baryon anomaly) and the nuclear modification of particle yields up to  high pt (> 10 GeV/c) in Pb-Pb collisions are observed. The particle production is also  studied in jets from pp collisions at 7 TeV and the results are well described by Perugia-0  tune of PYTHIA6.  
date: 2013
type: Dissertation
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15651/1/xglu_Dissertation_20130813.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00015651
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-156515
identifier:   Lu, Xianguo  (2013) Exploring the performance limits of the ALICE Time Projection Chamber and Transition Radiation Detector for measuring identified hadron production at the LHC.  [Dissertation]     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15651/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/help/license_urhg.html
language: eng