Speaker: Alexander Deisting (RHUL)
The ALICE Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is ALICE’s main tracking an particle ID detector and will be upgraded during the ongoing LHC long shut-down 2. After the upgrade the TPC will be operated in a continuous mode, allowing the experiment to examine every event in 50 kHz lead-lead collisions. In this talk I will motivate the choice of a Time Projection Chamber (TPC) as ALICE main tracking and particle ID detector. The ALICE TPC will then be introduced and I discuss its performance during LHC Run 1 and Run 2. The main part of the talk focuses on the upgrade: The replacement of the current multi-wire proportional chambers by readout chambers equipped with Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) foils. Starting from the requirements on the new chambers the R&D process will be discussed and an overview on the mass production of readout chambers will be given.