TPOT Detector at sPHENIX: Design, Performance and Distortion Reconstruction

sPHENIX is the new heavy ion experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) ring at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). It is a state of the art detector studying the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), jets, heavy flavor physics and more through p+p, A+p and A+A collisions. The Time Projection Chamber Outer Tracker (TPOT) is a gas detector subsystem that sits between the Electromagnetic Calorimeter (EMCAL) and the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) at the sPHENIX experiment. It is a tracking detector made up of an array of eight Micromegas modules that aims to measure the distortions both static and dynamic to the electron drift in the TPC, alongside the other existing solutions in sPHENIX, to an accuracy better than 100um. Correcting for these distortions to such level of accuracy is mandatory for sPHENIX to reach its design performances in terms of momentum and invariant mass resolution, and complete its physics program. After introducing the sPHENIX detector, physics goals and the basics of the sPHENIX TPC, this talk will cover the design and performance of the TPOT detector, along with the other means implemented by sPHENIX to measure and correct for the distortions in the TPC.