Amy Hummel, Creighton UniversityTitle: Analysis of Test Data from the STAR ExperimentAuthors: A. Hummel, J. Seger (Creighton University); M. Lopez, I. Sakrejda (Lawrence-Berkeley National Lab, and the STAR Collaboration)Abstract: The Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR) is a detector being built at Brookhaven National Laboratory that will search for quark-gluon plasma signatures in heavy ion collisions. A quark-gluon plasma is a phase of matter where quarks and gluons, which are normally confined to individual protons and neutrons, mix with quarks and gluons of neighboring protons and neutrons. This phase of matter is theorized to have existed for less than one millisecond in the beginnings of the universe. The main detector of the STAR experiment, the Time Projection Chamber (TPC), recently came online for hardware and software tests. Test data has already been collected from cosmic ray tests of the TPC. I will present an analysis of pedestal voltage variations in the pads located at the endcaps of the TPC. This analysis will help to identify defects in the electronic readout system and can be used to calibrate the detector. |