S. J. Hillier

The OPAL silicon-tungsten calorimeter front end electronics

A pair of small angle silicon-tungsten (Si-W) calorimeters has been built to measure the luminosity to a precision better than 0.1% in the OPAL experiment at the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider at CERN near Geneva. Each calorimeter contains 19 layers of tungsten (W) plates and silicon (Si) detectors, corresponding to a total of 22 radiation lengths, sampled by about 1 m/sup 2/ of detectors divided into 304/spl times/64 independently read out channels. A complete electronics system has been developed, from the preamplifier up to the VME read out and control interface. It includes a fast trigger based on analogue sums. This paper describes how a large number of channels have been implemented in a dense environment, thanks to the use of ASICs directly bonded on the detector. >

The ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger

The ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger uses reduced-granularity information from all the ATLAS calorimeters to search for high transverse-energy electrons, photons, τ leptons and jets, as well as high missing and total transverse energy. The calorimeter trigger electronics has a fixed latency of about 1 μs, using programmable custom-built digital electronics. This paper describes the Calorimeter Trigger hardware, as installed in the ATLAS electronics cavern.

The trigger system of the OPAL experiment at LEP

Abstract A pretrigger system is described for running the OPAL detector at the LEP e + e − collider with more bunches than originally foreseen. A large number of low threshold pretrigger signals are formed by several independent components of the detector, and combined by a custom-built VME-based central pretrigger logic. Flexibility, high efficiency and high redundancy in all physics channels are all achieved with low additional deadtime, without any compromise to the trigger performance.

Use of an FPGA to identify electromagnetic clusters and isolated hadrons in the ATLAS level-1 calorimeter trigger

Abstract At the full LHC design luminosity of 10 34 cm −2 s −1 , there will be approximately 10 9 proton–proton interactions per second. The ATLAS level-1 trigger is required to have an acceptance factor of ∼10 −3 . The calorimeter trigger covers the region | η |⩽5.0, and φ =0 to 2 π . The distribution of transverse energy over the trigger phase space is analysed to identify candidates for electrons/photons, isolated hadrons, QCD jets and non-interacting particles. The Cluster Processor of the level-1 calorimeter trigger is designed to identify transverse energy clusters associated with the first two of these. The algorithms based on the trigger tower energies which have been designed to identify such clusters, are described here. The algorithms are evaluated using an FPGA. The reasons for the choice of the actual FPGA being used are given. The performance of the FPGA has been fully simulated, and the expected latency has been shown to be within the limits of the time allocated to the cluster trigger. These results, together with the results of measurements made with real data into a fully configured FPGA, are presented and discussed.

The ATLAS level-1 calorimeter trigger architecture

The architecture of the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger system (L1Calo) is presented. Common approaches have been adopted for data distribution, result merging, readout, and slow control across the three different subsystems. A significant amount of common hardware is utilized, yielding substantial savings in cost, spares, and development effort. A custom, high-density backplane has been developed with data paths suitable for both the em//spl tau/ cluster processor (CP) and jet/energy-summation processor (JEP) subsystems. Common modules also provide interfaces to VME, CANbus and the LHC timing, trigger and control system (TTC). A common data merger module (CMM) uses field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with multiple configurations for summing electron/photon and /spl tau//hadron cluster multiplicities, jet multiplicities, or total and missing transverse energy. The CMM performs both crate- and system-level merging. A common, FPGA-based readout driver (ROD) is used by all of the subsystems to send input, intermediate and output data to the data acquisition (DAQ) system, and region-of-interest (RoI) data to the level-2 triggers. Extensive use of FPGAs throughout the system makes the trigger flexible and upgradable, and several architectural choices have been made to reduce the number of intercrate links and make the hardware more robust.

The data acquisition system of the OPAL detector at LEP

Abstract This report describes the 1991 implementation of the data acquisition system of the OPAL detector at LEP including the additional services and infrastructure necessary for its correct and reliable operation. The various tasks in this “on-line” environment are distributed amongst many VME subsystems, workstations and minicomputers which communicate over general purpose local area networks and special purpose buses. The tasks include data acquisition, control, monitoring, calibration and event reconstruction. The modularity of both hardware and software facilitates the upgrading of the system to meet new requirements.

Strategies and Tools for ATLAS Online Monitoring

ATLAS is one of the four experiments under construction along the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ring at CERN. The LHC will produce interactions at a center-of-mass energy equal to radics = 14 TeV with a frequency of 40 MHz. The detector consists of more than 140 million electronic channels. The challenging experimental environment and the extreme detector complexity impose the necessity of a common, scalable, distributed monitoring framework, which can be tuned for optimal use by different ATLAS sub-detectors at the various levels of the ATLAS data flow. This paper presents the architecture of this monitoring software framework and describes its current implementation, which has already been used at the ATLAS beam test activity in 2004. Preliminary performance results, obtained on a computer cluster consisting of 700 nodes, will also be presented, showing that the performance of the current implementation is within the range of the final ATLAS requirements.

Production and testing of limited streamer tubes for the end-cap muon subdetector of OPAL

Abstract The construction and testing of plastic streamer tubes for use as a large-area muon detector at OPAL are described. The use of extruded Noryl coated with a new carbon-loaded vinyl resistive paint is found to give tubes that behave in a uniform and reliable manner.

First data with the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger

The ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger is one of the main elements of the first stage of event selection for the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The input stage consists of a mixed analogue/digital component taking trigger sums from the ATLAS calorimeters. The trigger logic is performed in a digital, pipelined system with several stages of processing, largely based on FPGAs, which perform programmable algorithms in parallel with a fixed latency to process about 300 Gbyte/s of input data. The real-time output consists of counts of different types of physics objects, and energy sums. The final system consists of over 300 custom-built VME modules, of several different types. The installation at ATLAS of these modules, and the necessary infrastructure, was completed at the end of 2007. The system has since undergone intensive testing, both in standalone mode, and in conjunction with the whole of the ATLAS detector in combined running. The final steps of commissioning, and experience with running the full-scale system are presented. Results of integration tests performed with the upstream calorimeters, and downstream trigger and data-flow systems, are shown, along with an analysis of the performance of the calorimeter trigger in full ATLAS data-taking. This includes trigger operation during the cosmic muon runs from before LHC start-up, and a first look at LHC proton beam data.

ATLAS level-1 calorimeter trigger: subsystem tests of a Jet/Energy-sum Processor module

The ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger consists of a Preprocessor, a Cluster Processor (CP), and a Jet/Energy-sum Processor (JEP). The CP and JEP receive digitised trigger-tower data from the Preprocessor and produce trigger multiplicities and total and missing energy for the final trigger decision. The trigger will also provide region-of-interest (RoI) information for the Level-2 trigger and intermediate results of the data acquisition (DAQ) system for monitoring and diagnostics by using readout driver modules (ROD). The Jet/Energy-sum Processor identifies and localises jets, and sums total and missing transverse energy information from the trigger data. The Jet/Energy Module (JEM) is the main module of the Jet/Energy-sum Processor. The JEM prototype is designed to be functionally identical to the final production module for ATLAS, and have the full number of channels. Three JEM prototypes have been built and successfully tested. Various test vector patterns were used to test the energy summation and the jet algorithms. Data communication between adjacent Jet/Energy Modules and all other relevant modules of the Jet/Energy-sum Processor has been tested. Recent test results using the Jet/Energy Module prototypes are presented and discussed.