The LHC will increase the collider's intensity (or “luminosity”) resulting in a six times larger dataset than currently available. As the LHC's largest experiment, ATLAS will be similarly transformed to handle this surge of data through an ambitious upgrade.
"The HL-LHC will shape particle physics for decades to come, and preparing for it is among the most ambitious scientific undertakings our collaboration has ever engaged in," says ATLAS Spokesperson Stéphane Willocq. "To record data under these extreme conditions, the ATLAS experiment's core systems have been fundamentally reinvented. This will allow us to continue pushing the frontiers of knowledge, exploring the limits of our current theories and looking for answers to the questions they leave open.”
Max Planck Institute for Physics founding member of ATLAS
The ATLAS experiment is run by a global collaboration of 6000 members from institutes around the world involving more than 1600 Master’s and PhD students. The Max Planck Institute for Physics was one of the founding institutes in ATLAS; its scientists were involved in the development of key components, particularly in the technical design and construction
- of the muon system, which records the tracks of muons,
- of the the hadronic end-cap calorimeter: It measures the energy of all particles - including neutrons, pions and protons - developing showers in its thick copper plates,
- of the the innermost track detector, which measures the direction, charge, and momentum of newly created charged particles.
- In addition, the MPP is involved in the development and operations of electronic systems for data analyses.
Furthermore, the institute plays an important role in the analysis of collision data, particularly in characterizing the Higgs boson and its interactions with other elementary particles, while also making major contributions to top-quark physics and, more generally, to precision measurements of elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, such as the electroweak and strong forces. The MPP is also involved in the search for new particles and phenomena, including possible candidates for dark matter.
Decisions in microseconds
"The success of ATLAS is built on vibrant international collaboration," said MPP director Marumi Kado. "We are proud of the vital contributions our team has made to the ATLAS scientific program. Over the past few years, our researchers have been working intensely to adapt all of these systems to meet the requirements of the HL-LHC.
This includes new, more radiation-resistant electronics for the calorimeter and the muon system. In addition, new detectors and components have been developed: The inner track tracker is now equipped with new, very small pixel modules that allow for better differentiation between signals and background. The MPP has also played a key role in the development and construction of new muon chambers. These sMDTs are connected to a new generation of trigger chambers. Both can handle significantly higher particle counting rates and have a lifespan ten times longer than earlier versions.
In addition, MPP has developed the design for the new muon trigger processors and is now building the corresponding electronic readout and processing boards. These enable a significantly faster and more precise preselection of interesting collisions already in the first stage of the trigger system, which decides within microseconds which events will be processed further.
Upgrading ATLAS for HL-LHC will demand one of the most complex engineering campaigns in CERN's history. Across ATLAS institutes around the world, researchers have been designing, constructing and testing the next generation of detector technologies that are now making their way to CERN for installation.