V. Altini, T. Anticic, F. Carena, W. Carena, S. Chapeland, V. Chibante Barroso, F. Costa, E. Dénes, R. Divià, U. Fuchs, I. Makhlyueva, F. Roukoutakis, K. Schossmaier, C. Soós, T. Kiss, P. Vande Vyvre, B. von Haller For the ALICE Collaboration CHEP - Prague March 2009 Commissioning and initial experience with the ALICE on-line

Outline ALICE experiment ALICE online systems Detector Commissioning Global Commissioning Lessons from 2008 Goals for 2009 Conclusion CHEP March 20092P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH

LHC Point 2 CHEP March 20093P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH ALICE CERN CH

ALICE: A Large Ion Collider Experiment at CERN-LHC General-purpose heavy-ion detector Study of strongly interacting matter and the quark-gluon plasma in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC Detector designed to cope with the highest particle multiplicities anticipated for Pb-Pb reactions Complex experiment for online systems 18 detectors (last one being installed now) 10 detectors providing input to the trigger 2 types of beams: pp and Pb-Pb 3-level hardware trigger and 1 High-Level Trigger firmware/software Multiple partitions and multiple detector clusters Not surprisingly: complex commissioning ! CHEP March 20094P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH

CHEP March 20095P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH Size: 16 x 26 meters Weight: 10,000 tonnes 18 detectors 5 online systems ALICE

Trigger – DAQ – HLT ‘08 CHEP March 20096P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH GDC TDSM CTP LTU TTC FERO LTU TTC FERO LDC BUSY Rare/All Event Fragment Sub-event Event File Storage Network PDS L0, L1a, L2 360 DDLs D-RORC EDM LDC D-RORC Load Bal. LDC D-RORC HLT Farm FEP DDL H-RORC 10 DDLs 10 D-RORC 10 HLT LDC 120 DDLs DA DQM DSS Event Building Network 430 D-RORC 125 Detector LDC 30 GDC 10 TDSM 18 DSS 20 DA/DQM 25 TDS Archiving on Tape in the Computing Centre (Meyrin)

Trigger – DAQ – HLT ‘09 CHEP March 20097P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH GDC TDSM CTP LTU TTC FERO LTU TTC FERO LDC BUSY Rare/All Event Fragment Sub-event Event File Storage Network PDS L0, L1a, L2 360 DDLs D-RORC EDM LDC D-RORC Load Bal. LDC D-RORC HLT Farm FEP DDL H-RORC 10 DDLs 10 D-RORC 10 HLT LDC 120 DDLs DA DQM DSS Event Building Network 430 D-RORC 125 Detector LDC 90 GDC 30 TDSM 18 DSS 40 DA/DQM 75 TDS Archiving on Tape in the Computing Centre (Meyrin)

Control Logical Model CHEP March 20098P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH DAQ ECS CTPDCS HLT ECS: Experiment Control System DCS: Detector Control System CTP: Central Trigger Processor DAQ: Data Acquisition HLT: High Level Trigger

Detector in Standalone Mode CHEP March 20099P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH DAQ Run Control TPC ECS DCA LTU TPC Control DCS TPC LVGasHV TPC LTU LDC 1 LDC 2 LDC 216 HLT Farm DCA: Detector Control Agent LTU: Local Trigger Unit

Global Partition CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH DAQ TPC DCA TPC LTU TPC DCS TPC HLT DCA: ECS Detector Control Agent PCA: ECS Partition Control Agent DAQ SPD DCA SPD LTU SPD DCS SPD HLT DAQ Muon DCA Muon LTU Muon DCS Muon HLT PCA SPD

CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH Data Quality Monitoring DQM framework is ready. Not yet used routinely by all detectors. DQM framework is ready. Not yet used routinely by all detectors.

CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH eLogBook Electronics Logbook Online status display of TRG and DAQ running conditions Run statistics with filter on all fields eLogBook: From replacing the paper logbook to a powerfull data mining tool eLogBook: From replacing the paper logbook to a powerfull data mining tool

ALICE Commissioning CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar st global run Dec 2 nd global run 4 Feb-9 Mar 3 rd global run 5 May – 20 Oct First particles from machine 15 Jun Injection tests 8 Aug, 24 Aug 1 st Circulating beam 10 Sep Installation & Commissioning 24/7 operation Installation&Upgrade Helium leak incident 19 Sep

Detector Commissioning Standalone commissioning Services: cabling, cooling, power supplies, etc Detector hardware, firmware, software Interfaces to online systems Online commissioning process Control procedure up to the state “Ready for Data Taking” Exposed to variety of trigger (cosmic, pulser up to 40 MHz, random) Data taking stability tests Calibration procedure Integration to global partition CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH

Detector Commissioning CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH

Global Commissioning Exercise stability Detectors Services Online systems 23 systems (18 detectors and 5 online systems)  < 0.5 ! Measure performance Detector readout time and event size Online systems Take data Cosmic data for detector alignment Detector calibration (E.g.: TPC calibration with krypton or laser) Organize operation CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH

ALICE Control Room CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH Day… and night

Cosmic Run I (Dec ‘07) CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH Global runs in 2 weeks 14 detectors participating hours of data taking – 1-20 x 10 6 triggers Global runs in 2 weeks 14 detectors participating hours of data taking – 1-20 x 10 6 triggers

Cosmic Run I TOF Comparison of hit time distribution in ACORDE and random triggers SPD Comparison of number of clusters per event in the 2 SPD layers CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH

Cosmic Run II (Feb-Mar ‘08) CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH Global runs in 5 weeks 13 detectors participating hours of data taking – 2-50 x 10 6 triggers Global runs in 5 weeks 13 detectors participating hours of data taking – 2-50 x 10 6 triggers

Cosmic Run II TPC Cluster distribution Resolution over drift length Muon Tracking Online data monitoring vs offline analysis CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH

Cosmic Run III (May-Oct ‘08) CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH Global runs in 23 weeks 16 detectors participating hours of data taking – x 10 6 triggers Global runs in 23 weeks 16 detectors participating hours of data taking – x 10 6 triggers

Cosmic Run III CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH after alignment before alignment SSD: p-n charge correlation SDD: Drift speed calibration vs position SPD Alignment:

Global runs CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH Global runs with all detectors are still difficult to achieve

System Stability CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH Stability of global runs has improved substantially during the cosmic runs

ALICE SPD: the first LHC “event” CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH On 15 June 2008 the ALICE SPD in self-triggering mode (L0) sees one of the first “sign of life” of LHC during the beam injection test in Tl2 Run Time 18:10

Lessons from 2008 Services Detectors: Work in progress for firmware and software  readout time and zero suppression (event size) Noise and grounding Online systems: Control scalability: some systems isolated and load distributed CPU needed for data formatting: late decision to format data into reconstruction ready format CPU needed higher than anticipated Price to pay for allowing single pass offline analysis Spurious triggers : fixed during cosmic run Global sequences of detector control still in the phase of being defined  Not yet fully automated But a successful commissioning of the whole experiment and ready for startup in September ‘08 CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH

Goals for 2009… and after Ready for a nominal data taking year 10 months pp + 1 month HI Full deployment of the DAQ system: 40  100 % performance Increase of HLT CPU power Improve feedback to shift crew (DQM deployment) Reduce the size of shift crews Group of detectors Automation of atomic operations (configuration, calibration) Automation of global planning Central system for the configuration/archiving of all the trigger detectors and the corresponding trigger processors CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH

Conclusion ALICE became reality after almost 15 years of design and installation Commissioning of detectors and online systems lasted from Dec ‘07 to Sep ’08. Work intensive ! Online systems contributed to the detector commissioning, alignment, and calibration Experiment ready to start with beam in September ‘08 Will be ready again in September ’09 ! CHEP March P. VANDE VYVRE CERN-PH