121719013
Electrical characteristics of silicon pixel detectors
Prototype sensors for the ATLAS silicon pixel detector have been electrically characterized. The current and voltage characteristics, charge-collection efficiencies, and resolutions have been examined. Devices were fabricated on oxygenated and standard detector-grade silicon wafers. Results from prototypes which examine p-stop and standard and moderated p-spray isolation are presented for a variety of geometrical options. Some of the comparisons relate unirradiated sensors with those that have received fluences relevant to LHC operation.
73653251
Imaging performance of a DEPFET pixel Bioscope system in Tritium autoradiography
Abstract A Bioscope system based on a 64 × 64 -matrix of DEPFET pixels has been developed for real-time digital autoradiography in biomedical applications. It provides very good energy and spatial resolution at the same time. The DEPFET pixel cells consist of p -channel JFETs integrated into the high-ohmic n -silicon substrate. This leads to a very low noise performance at room temperature. Two dedicated ASIC chips have been developed for steering and readout of the pixel matrix. The measured system noise of ( 69 ± 4 ) e - at 35 ∘ C is mostly due to sensor leakage current and can be largely reduced by cooling or a faster readout. The spatial resolution is examined by measurements with a laser as well as with a dedicated test chart and is determined to be ( 6.7 ± 0.7 ) μ m for 6 keV-X-rays and 4.3 ± 0.8 μ m for 22 keV-X-rays. The measurements are compared to simulation results with different reconstruction algorithms. Due to the thin entrance window at the detector backside and the low noise performance, a detection of low-energy β -emitters such as 3H is possible. Measurements with 3H-labeled biological samples were taken. The ability of the DEPFET pixel Bioscope to separate different radiolabels in the same sample is demonstrated by a measurement with 3H and 14C.
34283775
Tracking and level-1 triggering in the forward region of the ATLAS muon spectrometer at sLHC
In the endcap region of the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer (η  >  1) precision tracking and Level-1 triggering are performed by different types of chambers. Monitored Drift Tube chambers (MDT) and Cathode Strip Chambers (CSC) are used for precision tracking, while Thin Gap Chambers (TGC) form the Level-1 muon trigger, selecting muons with high transverse momentum (pT). When by 2018 the LHC peak luminosity of 1034 cm−2s−1 will be increased by a factor of ~ 2 and by another factor of ~ 2–2.5 in about a decade from now (``SLHC''), an improvement of both systems, precision tracking and Level-1 triggering, will become mandatory in order to cope with the high rate of uncorrelated background hits (``cavern background'') and to stay below the maximum trigger rate for the muon system, which is in the range of 10–20 % of the 100 kHz rate, allowed for ATLAS. For the Level-1 trigger of the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer this means a stronger suppression of sub-threshold muons in the high-pT trigger as well as a better rejection of tracks not coming from the primary interaction point. Both requirements, however, can only be fulfilled if spatial resolution and angular pointing accuracy of the trigger chambers, in particular of those in the Inner Station of the endcap, are improved by a large factor. This calls for a complete replacement of the currrently used TGC chambers by a new type of trigger chambers with better performance. In parallel, the precision tracking chambers must be replaced by chambers with higher rate capability to be able to cope with the intense cavern background. In this article we present concepts to decisively improve the Level-1 trigger with newly developed trigger chambers, being characterized by excellent spatial resolution, good time resolution and sufficiently short latency. We also present new types of precision chambers, designed to maintain excellent tracking efficiency and spatial resolution in the presence of high levels of uncorrelated background hits, as generated by γ and neutron conversions.
195868697
Irradiation tests of double-sided silicon strip detectors with a special guard ring structure
The results of the first irradiation tests of newly designed silicon microstrip detectors performed with 21 MeV protons at the Max-Planck-Institut in Heidelberg are presented. The detectors were developed and produced by the semiconductor laboratory of the Max-Planck-Institut in Munich. Novel guard ring structures allow operation of the detectors at voltages exceeding 300 V.
120274396
Timing properties of an avalanche diode for single photon counting
A new concept for a silicon single photon counter has been developed at the Semiconductor Laboratory of the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics. The concept combines the principles of a drift diode and an avalanche diode. The electron which is generated by an incoming photon has to drift to the small avalanche region and avalanche breakdown will take place. The detector is operated in Geiger mode. In order to provide high efficiency and good timing properties, the electrons have to be focussed properly with short time jitter. Therefore, drift and timing properties have been investigated using simulations.
19809846
Development of Fast High-Resolution Muon Drift-Tube Detectors for High Counting Rates
Abstract Pressurized drift-tube chambers are efficient detectors for high-precision tracking over large areas. The Monitored Drift-Tube (MDT) chambers of the muon spectrometer of the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reach a spatial resolution of 35 μ m and almost 100% tracking efficiency with 6 layers of 30 mm diameter drift tubes operated with an Ar:CO 2 (93:7) gas mixture at 3 bar and a gas gain of 20 000. The ATLAS MDT chambers are designed to cope with background counting rates due to neutrons and γ rays of up to about 300 kHz per tube which will be exceeded for LHC luminosities larger than the design value of 10 34  cm −1  s −1 . Decreasing the drift-tube diameter to 15 mm while keeping the other parameters, including the gas gain, unchanged reduces the maximum drift time from about 700 to 200 ns and the drift-tube occupancy by a factor of 7. New drift-tube chambers for the endcap regions of the ATLAS muon spectrometer have been designed. A prototype chamber consisting of 12 times 8 layers of 15 mm diameter drift tubes of 1 m length has been constructed with a sense wire positioning accuracy of 20 μ m . The 15 mm diameter drift-tubes have been tested with cosmic rays in the Gamma Irradiation Facility at CERN at γ counting rates of up to 1.85 MHz.
14331743
D-brane instanton effects in Type II orientifolds: local and global issues
We review how D-brane instantons can generate open string couplings of stringy hierarchy in the superpotential which violate global abelian symmetries and are therefore perturbatively forbidden. We discuss the main ingredients of this mechanism, focussing for concreteness on Euclidean $D2$-branes in Type IIA orientifold compactifications. Special emphasis is put on a careful analysis of instanton zero modes and a classification of situations leading to superpotential or higher fermionic F-terms. This includes the discussion of chiral and non-chiral instanton recombination, viewed as a multi-instanton effect. As phenomenological applications we discuss the generation of perturbatively forbidden Yukawa couplings in SU(5) GUT models and Majorana masses for right-handed neutrinos. Finally we analyse the mirror dual description of $D1$-instantons in Type I compactifications with $D9$-branes and stable holomorphic bundles. We present globally defined semi-realistic string vacua on an elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau realising the non-perturbative generation of Majorana masses.
110325204
Upgrade of the Readout Electronics of the ATLAS MDT Detector for SLHC
Simulation predicts a high level of ionizing radiation in the ATLAS experimental hall during LHC operation. This radiation will act as a source of background signals to the four subsystems of the ATLAS muon detector. We present the performance of the Monitored Drift Tube detector (MDT) under these background conditions and discuss the consequences for the much higher background rates at SLHC with respect to tracking efficiency, resolution and readout bandwidth. For rates beyond the expected LHC levels, we discuss options to improve the performance of detector and electronics.
121450717
Development of Precision Muon Drift Tube Detectors for the High-Luminosity Upgrade of the LHC
For use at the future Super-LHC a new type of muon detector has been developed. It is based on the proven MDT drift tube design, but with tubes of half the diameter, leading to higher rate capabilities by an order of magnitude. We present test results on efficiency and position resolution at high background rates and describe the practical implementation in a real-size prototype.
55147901
Light stringy states
A bstractWe carefully study the spectrum of open strings localized at the intersections of D6-branes and identify the lowest massive ‘twisted’ states and their vertex operators, paying particular attention to the signs of the intersection angles. We argue that the masses of the lightest states scale as $ M_{\theta }^2 \approx \theta M_s^2 $ and can thus be parametrically smaller than the string scale. Relying on previous analyses, we compute scattering amplitudes of massless ‘twisted’ open strings and study their factorization, confirming the presence of the light massive states as sub-dominant poles in one of the channels.
118892007
Proton decay via dimension-six operators in intersecting D6-brane models
Abstract We analyze the proton decay via dimension six operators in supersymmetric SU ( 5 ) -grand unified models based on intersecting D6-brane constructions in type IIA string theory orientifolds. We include in addition to 10 ∗ 1010 ∗ 10 interactions also the operators arising from 5 ¯ ∗ 5 ¯ 10 ∗ 10 interactions. We provide a detailed construction of vertex operators for any massless string excitation arising for arbitrary intersecting D-brane configurations in type IIA toroidal orientifolds. In particular, we provide explicit string vertex operators for the 10 and 5 ¯ chiral superfields and calculate explicitly the string theory correlation functions for above operators. In the analysis we chose the most symmetric configurations in order to maximize proton decay rates for the above dimension six operators and we obtain a small enhancement relative to the field theory result. After relating the string proton decay rate to field theory computations the string contribution to the proton lifetime is τ p ST = ( 0.5 – 2.1 ) × 10 36  years , which could be up to a factor of three shorter than that predicted in field theory.