The Transition Radiation Detector for ALICE at LHC

TL;DR

The ALICE TRD at LHC is designed to identify electrons and provide fast tracking in high-multiplicity heavy-ion collisions, with recent commissioning demonstrating promising performance and understanding.

Contribution

This paper introduces the design and initial performance results of the ALICE Transition Radiation Detector at LHC.

Findings

Successful installation and commissioning of the TRD supermodules

Good position resolution and pion rejection capabilities

Initial data from cosmic ray tracks confirm detector performance

Abstract

The Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) for the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) identifies electrons in p+p and in the challenging high multiplicity environment of heavy-ion collisions and provides fast online tracking for the ALICE Level1 trigger. The TRD is designed to have excellent position resolution and pion rejection capability. Presently, six of the 18 TRD supermodules are installed in the ALICE central barrel. In 2008, four supermodules were installed and commissioning of the detector using cosmic ray tracks was successfully performed. We briefly describe the design of the detector and report on the performance and current understanding of the detector based on these data.