A follow-your-nose tracker for the NIFFTE TPC

The Neutron Induced Fission Fragment Tracking Experiment (NIFFTE) will employ a compact, pressurized Time Projection Chamber (TPC) to study neutron-induced fission of the major actinides. The software to reconstruct the fragment tracks in the TPC must be capable of sifting through the large volume of sampled data to identify them and determine their (A,Z). This poster presents the status of a ``follow-your-nose" tracking algorithm developed for NIFFTE that proceeds in several stages. It first performs 2-dimensional clustering of raw TPC voxels, followed by mountain-finding and hit-fitting to form hits. It then searches for contiguous hits, starting from the outer edge of the TPC near the pad plane where the population is lower, and working inward toward the target. At each step, the most likely location for the next hit is predicted by a straight-line extrapolation of the current list of hits associated to the track. Track-fitting and error correction are completed once no more hits are found to belong to a given track. The status of the track finder and its performance on simulated events will be presented.