Quality Assurance Analysis of Au+Au Collision Data Recorded in the sPHENIX Time Projection Chamber (TPC)

At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Lab, the sPHENIX experiment is designed to investigate the properties of the quark-gluon plasma, a high-temperature state of matter produced in heavy ion collisions. Gold-gold (Au+Au) collisions are being recorded using a suite of tracking detectors, calorimeters, and global detectors. This analysis focuses on the performance of the Time Projection Chamber (TPC), a gaseous, cylindrical detector capable of measuring the momenta of charged particles. To assess its performance, I conducted a run-by-run analysis of the data recorded by the TPC across various criteria. The first criterion is the timing of the laser injected into the TPC during each run, which is essential for run-by-run calibrations. The second criterion is the stability of the front-end electronics (FEE) boards instrumented into the TPC, responsible for recording data from each collision. These criteria determine the quality of each data-taking period, and the highest-quality runs will be selected for future analyses.