Friday 27 June 2014

Helping out with ATLAS Tile Calorimeter Demonstrator

In May this year I moved to CERN in Switzerland for 3 months as part of my studies at University of the Witwatersrand. I have since joined the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter Demonstrator project Group and been helping out where I can. Their aim has been to design, build and install a Hybrid Demonstrator prototype that will replace the aging front-end electronics from 1 to 3 slices of the ATLAS TileCal before RUN 2 begins in 2015. 

The entire LHC is in the process of being upgraded, by 2024 Phase II will begin where the beam energy will be increased to √s = 14 TeV and particle luminosity by a factor of 5. This will potentially address the unsolved mysteries such as dark matter. The demonstrator system needs to be fully compatible with current detector electronics as well as act as a validation for the new read-out architecture (Hybrid Design). Once fully upgraded the data output from the ATLAS TileCal will increase by 200 times to estimated 40 Tb/s!!

Earlier this month CERN had its second TileCal expert week of the year. Experts from around the world came together to help with the build of the first fully assembled Hybrid Demonstrator “Superdraw” prototype. A superdraw is composed 4 separate “minidraws” each that are independent in terms of power, readout and configuration. A total of 45 PMTs, 4 Motherboards, 4 High voltage Cards and 4 Daughter boards were needed to be assembled and connected together. The week was very successful with many new problems being identified as well as confirmation that all the components fitted together correctly and that the entire draw was able to fit in a slice of TileCal. Below are a few photos from that weeks assembly.


Newly built PMTs ready for use.
 


 Fully Assembled Minidraw.

Demonstrator Superdraw ready for testing.



 Insertion of the Draw into a Test Slice of the TileCal.

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