SCT COMMISSIONING · Commissioning and alignment of the SCT detector in the ATLAS experiment at CERN
FP6 — Marie Curie Actions (Human Resources and Mobility)
- Duration
- 2005-01-06 → 2007-01-05
- EU contribution
- €159,046
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- EIF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Final Activity Report Summary - SCT COMMISSIONING (Commissioning and alignment of the SCT detector in the ATLAS experiment at CERN)
A new particle accelerator called Large hadron collider (LHC) was built in the European physics laboratory of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva. Protons, the particles forming nuclei of atoms, would be accelerated there to extremely high energies, and subsequently collided together. The point of collision would be surrounded by particle detectors, one of which was called ATLAS. One of the crucial components of the ATLAS detector was a silicon tracker, SCT, which could very precisely measure the trajectories of particles emerging from the proton collisions. Kamil Sedlak participated in the SCT installation and commissioning. In particular, he tested the functionality and performance of the semiconductor (silicon) modules after they were mounted on a supporting carbon-fibre structure of the SCT. He also became responsible for the installation of the SCT readout optical cables, which would convey the measured data from the detector to the electronic readout system. Kamil investigated the time stability of the optical readout, tested the installed optical cables and wrote a computer programme to store and retrieve some detector-control data taken during the testing of the silicon modules. The precision of the measurements performed by the SCT required an excellent knowledge of the position and shape of the SCT tracker itself. Kamil worked on the implementation of a novel method called frequency scanning interferometry, FSI, which would monitor changes in the shape of the SCT tracker over time. He participated in the installation of the FSI monitoring system, on the laser safety aspects, supervised the technicians who installed the FSI optical cables, etc. The installation and commissioning of the SCT tracker was a very complex task that occupied many physicists and engineers. The most important achievement of the fellowship was that we helped to move the SCT towards its operational state. The first measurements on LHC accelerator was planned to start after the project completion, in 2007.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The ATLAS experiment for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is under construction at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. Its goal is to explore the fundamental nature of matter and the basic forces that shape our universe. One of the most important parts of t he ATLAS detector will be the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT), which is a sophisticated modern detector especially designed for the very accurate measurement of tracks of particles emerging from the high energetic collisions of protons at LHC. The main objective of this project is the technical realisation of the precise alignment of the SCT detector with the help of a novel method called Frequency Scanning Interferometry developed at the University of Oxford. The accurate alignment of the SCT is absolutely essential for achievement of the designed precision of the SCT measurements. Due to the thermal distortions inside the ATLAS detector, it is expected that the SCT detector will not be mechanically stable within the desired precision on a day scale. Therefore the alignment procedure must be done in a time dependent way, making the alignment difficult and challenging.Another goal of the project is testing and commissioning of the SCT detector during and after its building. We would also like to study physics processes that are well known from earlier high energy physics experiments, like masses and decay widths of W and Z bosons and of the top quark, which will be used to crosscheck functionality and performance of the SCT detector. The previously mentioned processes will form the main backgrounds to most of the discovery channels of the ATLAS experiment. We believe that the proposed project increases chances of the LHC programme to discover a new physics beyond the Standard Model and improves the precision of the results measured by the ATLAS collaboration. In this way, the project would strengthen the research excellence of the European science.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OXFORDCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union