Readout system of the ALICE Muon tracking detector

Abstract

A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) will be aimed at studying heavy ion collisions at the extreme energy densities accessible at the CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where the formation of the Quark Gluon Plasma is expected. The ALICE muon forward spectrometer will identify muons with momentum above 4GeV/c, allowing the study of quarkonia and heavy flavors in the pseudorapidity range −4.0<η<−2.5 with 2π azimuthal coverage. The muon tracking system consists of 10 Cathode Pad Chambers (CPC) with 1.1 million of pads that represent the total number of acquisition channels to manage.In this article, we will give an overview of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer. Afterward, we will focus on tracking system Front end Electronics (FEE) and readout system. We will show that the Digital Signal Processor (DSP) architecture fulfills all the requirements, including radiation hardness against neutrons. Finally, real-time performances are discussed.