Detector Development

ATLAS L1Calo: For the ATLAS upgrade, we are working on the read-out driver (ROD) for the L1 Calorimeter. These boards are responsible for for collecting data relating to each trigger event as part of a process referred to as Event Building. Data fragments relating to each event are collected from multiple Electron and Jet 'Feature Extractor' boards. These fragments of data are assembled on the ROD into a complete event, before being packetised and then forwarded on for further analysis and storage.

Each ROD is capable of a throughput of more that 200 Gbps, and there will be up to 8 RODs within the system. With their multiple high speed optical and electrical links, which operate at nearly 10 Gbps, these boards push the current limits of hardware design and require highly sophisticated FPGAs to carry out the necessary data processing.

The ROD boards are capable of processing each event in just 10 millionths of a second

Photon Sensor Studies: We study the characteristics of single-photon sensitive devices for applications such as the LHCb RICH where new devices are being explored that are capable of providing time-resolved detection of single photons at very high rate. We also exploit these devices in our muon scattering tomography project, outreach projects and beam test measurements to provide robust and compact sensors for triggering.

Cleanrooms: Our clean rooms contain a range of equipment for assembling and testing bare silicon devices, including a wire bonder, probe station, measurement microscope and environmental chamber. We use these facilities for characterising silicon strip detectors for ATLAS, investigating new radiation-hard devices for future upgrades and assembling test systems. These facilities will also be used for the production and testing hundreds of ATLAS semiconductor tracker modules for the forthcoming ATLAS upgrade.

PCB Assembly: The group has in-house facilities for producing small production runs of printed circuit boards (PCBs) for our hardware development work. Our equipment includes solder pasting equipment, a semi-automatic pick-and-place machine, vapour phase oven, rework station and optical inspection systems. This allows us to quickly and easily produce high-quality hardware for prototyping, development and testing.

Electronics Workshop: The electronics workshop supports our hardware development work at both the design and manufacturing stages. We undertake the vast majority of our design work in-house, using Altium and Cadence for electrical design, Autodesk Inventor for mechanics and various other specialist software tools such as LTSpice for electrical simulation and Vivado for firmware design. In addition, we are able to carry out basic mechanical manufacturing, with more complex jobs being undertaken by the excellent Cavendish Workshop.

Being able to develop and test our own hardware in-house is especially important in high-energy physics, where detector hardware is invariably designed as a one-off.

Spark Chamber: To support our outreach work, we have designed and built a spark chamber, which we use for outreach events. This is a compelling demonstration of the cosmic rays that continually bombard the earth and makes a great starting point for explaining what particle physics is, why it is important and how we can design experiments to detect particles. We are currently developing a more portable version of the spark chamber.