Pattern recognition and PID procedure with the ALICE-HMPID

The ALICE apparatus is dedicated to the study of pp, p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions provided by LHC. ALICE has unique particle identification (ND) capabilities among the (PID) experiments exploiting different PID techniques, i.e., energy loss, time-of-flight measurements, Cherenkov and transition radiation detection, calorimetry and topological ID. The ALICE-HMPID is devoted to the identification of charged hadrons. It consists of seven identical RICH counters, with liquid C6F14 as Cherenkov radiator (n approximate to 1.299 at lambda(ph)=175 nm). Photons and charged particles detection is performed by a proportional chamber, coupled with a pad segmented CsO coated photo-cathode. In pp and p-Pb events HMPID provides 3 sigmas separation for pions and kaons up to p(T) = 3 GeV/c and for protons up to p(T)=5 GeV/c. PID is performed by means of photon emission angle measurement, a challenging task in the high multiplicity environment of the most central Pb-Pb collisions. A dedicated algorithm has been implemented to evaluate the Cherenkov angle starting from the bi-dimensional ring pattern on the photons detector, it is based on the Hough Transform Method (HTM) to separate signal from background. In this way HMPID is able to contribute to inclusive hadrons spectra measurement as well as to measurements where high purity PID is required, by means of statistical or track-by-track PID. The pattern recognition, the results from angular resolution studies and the PID strategy with HMPID are presented. (C) 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.