Test Beam Results for ALICE TPC Upgrade Prototypes

The ALICE detector is one of four major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and its main purpose is to study the quark-gluon plasma created in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main tracking detector within ALICE, and currently has an intrinsic rate limitation of 3 kHz. The LHC will be upgraded during Long Shutdown 2 in 2018 to have Pb-Pb collision rates up to 50 kHz, and so the TPC readout must be accordingly upgraded. This will be done by replacing the current Multi-Wire Proportional Chamber assembly, which uses a gating grid to prevent ion backflow, with Micro-Pattern Gas Detectors such as Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs) and Micro-Mesh Gaseous Structures (MMGs), which allow for continuous rather than gated readout. A substantial R\&D effort is underway for a 4-GEM design, as well as an alternate 2-GEM/MMG design. Prototypes of each design were tested in November-December 2014 at the PS and SPS beams at CERN; the results for the 2-GEM/MMG chambers will be presented.