ATLAS sLHC upgrades
ATLAS sLHC upgrades
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the energy frontier machine for the foreseeable future. Following the full exploitation of the current LHC, a subsequent major luminosity upgrade - the Super LHC - motivated by physics results and operation experience, will take place. Simulation of the physics reach, points to an upgrade date of around 2016. There is an expectation that, to a factor of ten increases in luminosity, resulting in increases in detector occupancy and radiation fluence. This would necessitate a complete replacement of the ATLAS inner detector. Due to the complexity of the system, research and development work towards such a tracker upgrade has already started.
Building on our extensive experience in the construction of the ATLAS tracker, the group is playing key roles in development of the upgraded ATLAS tracker. We are active in the understanding of radiation hard silicon strip detectors for the Barrel tracker building on our expertise developed within RD50 and the ATLAS SCT. We are also contributing to the development of novel integrated modules using similar techniques to those used in fabricating 3D detectors. The thermal management of the modules is a key question that has to be addressed in the upgrade due to the increase in the granularity of the tracking system. The group is investigating new materials and determining their mechanical and thermal properties for use in the sLHC super module. The group is involved in:
- Materials studies for thermal and mechanical structures
- Silicon inner barrel strip detector development
- MCM-D research to replace the hybrid of the inner barrel strip module
- Studies on low mass power tapes for the barrel tracker
ATLAS pixel upgrades
ATLAS pixel upgrades
The group is active in the area of 3D pixel detectors within the RD50 collaboration and as part of the ATLAS 3D detector working group. The ATLAS activity aims to produce 3D pixel detectors for the replacement of the inner most pixel layer (expected in 2012) and for the pixel detector upgrade for the sLHC (expected 2016). The group's work at present concentrates on the development of the 3D sensors.
Contact: R. Bates
ATLAS Forward Physics (FP)
ATLAS Forward Physics (FP)
The Glasgow group is taking part in the ATLAS FP project which will install forward detectors at points 220m and 420m either side of the ATLAS detector (and possibly the CMS detector) at the LHC. The aim is to detect and study the Higgs and other new particles by a double-diffractive missing-mass technique. The detectors will comprise Roman Pot systems, or equivalent, containing newly developed edgeless 3D silicon detectors which will closely approach the beam line. We are using our leading expertise in beamline studies (developed for CDF/TeVatron) to track forward protons into the relevant experimental regions to assist in the design and specification of the detector parameters. It is intended to extend this work into the area of reconstruction software for the finally designed detector. The Glasgow group will join with the Manchester team in testing newly designed edgeless 3D silicon detector prototypes at CERN. The two groups will build and test the silicon modules and work on the installation and commissioning of the system.
At present 28 institutes worldwide have expressed interest in the ATLAS FP programme, within the UK collaborating institutes are Bristol, Cockcroft, IPPP Durham, Glasgow, Manchester , RAL and UCL.