Set up and programming of an ALICE Time-Of-Flight trigger facility and software implementation for its Quality Assurance (QA) during LHC Run 2

The Cosmic and Topology Trigger Module (CTTM) is the main component of a trigger based on the ALICE TOF detector. Taking advantage of the TOF fast response, this VME board implements the trigger logic and delivers several L0 trigger outputs, used since Run 1, to provide cosmic triggers and rare triggers in pp, p+Pb and Pb+Pb data taking. Due to TOF DCS architectural change of the PCs controlling the CTTM (from 32 bits to 64 bits) it is mandatory to upgrade the software related to the CTTM including the code programming the FPGA firmware. A dedicated CTTM board will be installed in a CERN lab (Meyrin site), with the aim of recreating the electronics chain of the TOF trigger, to get a comfortable porting of the code to the 64 bit environment. The project proposed to the summer student is the setting up of the CTTM and the porting of the software. Moreover, in order to monitor the CTTM Trigger board during the real data taking, the implementation of a new Quality Assurance (QA) code is also crucial, together with the development of new macros that will allow to perform fast checks, such as comparing QA output for real data and Monte Carlo. This will provide a test tool for the new CTTM software and automatic, fast and efficient checks of the QA outputs for the ALICE Time-Of-Flight in the reconstruction of LHC Run 2 data, paying a particular attention to the plots dedicated to the TOF trigger monitoring.