Detector Development
(Français/English)Write an abstract of detector development activities...
Semiconductor Tracker (SCT)
The SCT (twiki) is the strip tracking part of the Inner Detector based on 4 barrel layers and 9 endcap discs on each side of the barrel. Each of the 4088 modules are double sided with 20 mrad stereo angle. The University of Geneva involvement and contributions were and are in several fields: the barrel structures, the endcap module production, the integration and engineering, the commissioning of the barrel and the endcaps, the construction of a testbench facility (called barrel sector), the Detector Control System (DCS), the Data Acquision System (DAQ) and online data monitoring and detector operation.
Liquid Argon Calorimeter
The Liquid Argon calorimeters play a central role in the ATLAS experiment. The environment at the LHC collider imposes challenging tasks to their read-out system. To achieve measurements of particles and trigger signals at high precision, the detector signals are processed at various stages before reaching the Data Acquisition system (DAQ). Signals from the calorimeter cells are received by front-end boards, which digitize and sample the incoming pulse. The DPNC group has developed Read-Out Driver (ROD) boards which further process the data at a trigger rate of up to 75 kHz. An optimal filtering procedure is applied to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio. The ROD boards calculate precise energy, time and quality of the detector pulse, which are then sent to the DAQ. In addition, the RODs perform a monitoring of the data.
Tracker Upgrade
The future development work at DPNC for the ATLAS Tracker is closely linked to the upgrade of the LHC machine. The innermost pixel layer (b-layer) is not expected to survive the first phase of the luminosity upgrade planned for 2013 due to radiation damage and will become inefficient at such high rates. Thus, during the long LHC shutdown of 6 to 8 months, ATLAS intends to insert beween the beampipe and the current b-layer a new inner b-layer (IBL). For the second phase of the LHC upgrade, which will allow a significant increase of the yearly integrated luminosity to 600 fb-1, the current tracker should be completely renewed. A new development effort (twiki) is underway to design a new tracker based on silicon pixel and strips technologies only.
Last modified: 2009/05/07