0000000000398447

AUTHOR

J. Richstein

STUDIES OF WIRE GAIN AND TRACK DISTORTION NEAR THE SECTOR EDGES OF THE ALEPH TIME PROJECTION CHAMBER

Abstract The materials used to hold the wires at the sector edges in a large Time Projection Chamber (TPC) inrtoduce distortions of the electric drift field near those edges. These distortions degrade tracking information and sometimes cause large changes in wire gain near the edge. We have studied these two problems for the ALEPH TPC and have found that both can be greatly reduced by the addition of two field correction strips held at appropriate voltages.

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Management and Control of the Read Out Processors (tpps) of the Aleph Time Projection Chamber

The readout of the Aleph time projection chamber (TPC) relies on a set of 72 time projection processors (TPPs), which are based on a Motorola 68020 microprocessor running a real-time operating system. The advanced processing capabilities of the TPPs allow them to perform in parallel a number of tasks, both during and outside of data acquisition, which are outlined. The management and control of such a large number of intelligent devices is presented. The discussion covers the hardware configuration of the TPPs; the software running the TPPs; their management, status, and control; exception handling and message logging; and the TPP monitoring tasks. >

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Search for supersymmetric particles using acoplanar charged-particle pairs from Z0 decays

We have performed a search for supersymmetric particles using acoplanar pairs of oppositely-charged particles in decays of the Z0. In 0.53 pb−1 of integrated luminosity near the Z0 peak, we observe two events where approximately four are expected from background, allowing limits to be extended on combined photino and slepton masses, and also on combined photino and chargino masses.

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The read-out processors of the Aleph time projection chamber and their performance

The Aleph detector is installed on the LEP electron-positron storage ring. Its central tracking detector, a time projection chamber (TPC), has about 50000 channels of sampling electronics. The digitized signals are processed by 72 double-width Fastbus modules built around an MC 68020 processor. The time projection processor is described, and the solutions, both hardware and software, adopted to run and manage such a complex system in a Fastbus-VAX environment are discussed. Practical experience with the system is reported. >

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THE FASTBUS READ-OUT SYSTEM FOR THE ALEPH TIME PROJECTION CHAMBER

The readout system for the Aleph central tracking detector, a large time projection chamber (TPC), consists of more than 100 FASTBUS crates with approximately 1000 FASTBUS modules. The detector and its associated electronics are briefly presented, followed by a more detailed description of the readout and control system. The discussion covers the sector readout, electronics calibration, front-end data acquisition, data pipelining, and service request handling. Experiences with the system are discussed. >

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ALEPH: a Detector for Electron-Positron Annihilations at LEP

Process-centred Software Engineering Environments (PSEE) are the most recent generation of environments supporting software development activities. Most of PSEE are based on mechanisms promoting enforcement and automation of process activities. In this kind of mechanisms the process models are prescribed in a detailed and complete way. But the experience shows that supporting processes is more concerned with the flexibility of guidance offered during the process performance than with enforcement of a collection of predefined process models. In this paper, we present a solution to support strategic processes in a PSEE by providing a flexible guidance during process enactment.

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