Open Access

Johan Alme, Y. Andres, Harald Appelshäuser, Sebastian Bablok, Norbert Bialas, Rikard Bolgen, Uwe Bonnes, Roland Bramm, Peter Braun-Munzinger, Roberto Campagnolo, Peter Christiansen, Alexandru Florin Dobrin, Claude Engster, Dominik Fehlker, Yiota Foka, Ulrich Frankenfeld, Jens Joergen Gaardhøje, Chilo Garabatos, Peter Glässel, Carmen Gonzalez Gutierrez, Philippe Gros, Hans-Åke Gustafsson, Håvard Helstrup, Michael Hoch, Marian Ivanov, Rudolf Janik, Antoine Junique, Alexander Philipp Kalweit, Ralf Keidel, Stefan Kniege, Marek Kowalski, Dag Toppe Larsen, Yannick Lesenechal, Philippe Lenoir, Niels Lindegaard, Christian Lippmann, Magnus Mager, Manfred Mast, Adam Matyja, Magne Munkejord, Luciano Musa, Borge Svane Nielsen, Vedran Nikolic, Helmut Oeschler, E.K. Olsen, Anders Oskarsson, Lennart Osterman, Miroslav Pikna, Attiq ur Rehman, Gaël Renault, Rainer Arno Ernst Renfordt, Stefan Rossegger, Dieter Röhrich, Ketil Røed, Mattias Richter, G. Rueshmann, Andrzej Rybicki, Hans Sann, Hans-Rudolf Schmidt, Martin Siska, Branislav Sitar, Carsten Soegaard, Hans Kristian Soltveit, Daniel Soyk, Johanna Stachel, Herbert Stelzer, Evert Anders Stenlund, Reinhard Stock, Peter Strmeň, Imrich Szarka, Kjetil Ullaland, Danilo Vranić, Rob Veenhof, Joern Westergaard, Jens Wiechula, Bernd Windelband

• The design, construction, and commissioning of the ALICE Time-Projection Chamber (TPC) is described. It is the main device for pattern recognition, tracking, and identification of charged particles in the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. The TPC is cylindrical in shape with a volume close to 90 m3 and is operated in a 0.5 T solenoidal magnetic field parallel to its axis. In this paper we describe in detail the design considerations for this detector for operation in the extreme multiplicity environment of central Pb–Pb collisions at LHC energy. The implementation of the resulting requirements into hardware (field cage, read-out chambers, electronics), infrastructure (gas and cooling system, laser-calibration system), and software led to many technical innovations which are described along with a presentation of all the major components of the detector, as currently realized. We also report on the performance achieved after completion of the first round of stand-alone calibration runs and demonstrate results close to those specified in the TPC Technical Design Report.