Triggering the LBL Time Projection Chamber

We have built a fast digital trigger for the LBL Time Projection Chamber (TPC) installed in the PEP-4 detector at SLAC. The TPC is an innovative High Energy Physics detector which will provide particle identification from dE/dx information within the tracking volume. The TPC trigger uses discriminator signals from 2,220 dE/dx wire channels to require a track of ionization in the TPC which originates from the colliding beam intersection region. The trigger processing is performed as the ionization drifts onto the proportional wires and is completed 17 ¿s after beam crossing. In this report, we describe the basic operation of the TPC detector and its trigger; a pretrigger which uses prompt TPC information from the endcap region; and the electronic implementation. The trigger can be tested with realistic simulated patterns of ionization deposits in the TPC which are stored in local memories. We show test results from electronic simulations and first results of a test with cosmic rays.