Construction and Performance of the ALICE Transition Radiation Detector

The Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) has been designed to identify electrons in the pion dominated background of heavy-ions collisions. As electrons do not interact strongly, they allow to probe the early phase of the interaction. As trigger on high-pt e+e- pairs within 6.5 microseconds after collision, the TRD can initiate the readout of the Time Projection Chamber (TPC). The TRD is composed of 18 super modules arranged in a barrel geometry in the central part of the ALICE detector. It offers almost 1.2 million readout channels on a total area of close to 700 m². The particle detection properties of the TRD depend crucially on details in the design of the cathode pad readout plane. The design parameters of the TRD readout pad plane are introduced and analysed regarding their physical properties. The noise patterns observed in the detector can be directly linked to the static pad capacitance distribution and corrected for it. A summary is then given of the TRD services infrastructure at CERN: a 70kW low voltage system, a 1080 channel 2.5 kV high voltage setup and the Ethernet network serving more than 600 nodes. Two beam tests were conducted at the CERN PS accelerator in 2004 and 2007 using full sized TRD chambers from series production. Details on the setups are presented with particular emphasis on the custom tailored data acquisition systems. Finally the performance of the TRD is studied, focusing on the pion rejection capability and the excellent position resolution