A facility to Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) at the CERN SPS

A new general purpose fixed target facility is proposed at the CERN SPS accelerator which is aimed at exploring the domain of hidden particles and make measurements with tau neutrinos. Hidden particles are predicted by a large number of models beyond the Standard Model. The high intensity of the SPS 400~GeV beam allows probing a wide variety of models containing light long-lived exotic particles with masses below ${\cal O}$(10)~GeV/c$^2$, including very weakly interacting low-energy SUSY states. The experimental programme of the proposed facility is capable of being extended in the future, e.g. to include direct searches for Dark Matter and Lepton Flavour Violation.Comment: Technical Proposa

The Straw Tube Trackers of the PANDA Experiment

The PANDA experiment will be built at the FAIR facility at Darmstadt (Germany) to perform accurate tests of the strong interaction through bar pp and bar pA annihilation's studies. To track charged particles, two systems consisting of a set of planar, closed-packed, self-supporting straw tube layers are under construction. The PANDA straw tubes will have also unique characteristics in term of material budget and performance. They consist of very thin mylar-aluminized cathodes which are made self-supporting by means of the operation gas-mixture over-pressure. This solution allows to reduce at maximum the weight of the mechanical support frame and hence the detector material budget. The PANDA straw tube central tracker will not only reconstruct charged particle trajectories, but also will help in low momentum (< 1 GeV) particle identification via dE/dx measurements. This is a quite new approach that PANDA tracking group has first tested with detailed Monte Carlo simulations, and then with experimental tests of detector prototypes. This paper addresses the design issues of the PANDA straw tube trackers and the performance obtained in prototype tests.Comment: 7 pages,16 figure

MEG Upgrade Proposal

We propose the continuation of the MEG experiment to search for the charged lepton flavour violating decay (cLFV) \mu \to e \gamma, based on an upgrade of the experiment, which aims for a sensitivity enhancement of one order of magnitude compared to the final MEG result, down to the $6 \times 10^{-14}$ level. The key features of this new MEG upgrade are an increased rate capability of all detectors to enable running at the intensity frontier and improved energy, angular and timing resolutions, for both the positron and photon arms of the detector. On the positron-side a new low-mass, single volume, high granularity tracker is envisaged, in combination with a new highly segmented, fast timing counter array, to track positron from a thinner stopping target. The photon-arm, with the largest liquid xenon (LXe) detector in the world, totalling 900 l, will also be improved by increasing the granularity at the incident face, by replacing the current photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) with a larger number of smaller photosensors and optimizing the photosensor layout also on the lateral faces. A new DAQ scheme involving the implementation of a new combined readout board capable of integrating the diverse functions of digitization, trigger capability and splitter functionality into one condensed unit, is also under development. We describe here the status of the MEG experiment, the scientific merits of the upgrade and the experimental methods we plan to use.Comment: A. M. Baldini and T. Mori Spokespersons. Research proposal submitted to the Paul Scherrer Institute Research Committee for Particle Physics at the Ring Cyclotron. 131 Page

Summary and Outlook of the International Workshop on Aging Phenomena in Gaseous Detectors (DESY, Hamburg, October, 2001)

High Energy Physics experiments are currently entering a new era which requires the operation of gaseous particle detectors at unprecedented high rates and integrated particle fluxes. Full functionality of such detectors over the lifetime of an experiment in a harsh radiation environment is of prime concern to the involved experimenters. New classes of gaseous detectors such as large-scale straw-type detectors, Micro-pattern Gas Detectors and related detector types with their own specific aging effects have evolved since the first workshop on wire chamber aging was held at LBL, Berkeley in 1986. In light of these developments and as detector aging is a notoriously complex field, the goal of the workshop was to provide a forum for interested experimentalists to review the progress in understanding of aging effects and to exchange recent experiences. A brief summary of the main results and experiences reported at the 2001 workshop is presented, with the goal of providing a systematic review of aging effects in state-of-the-art and future gaseous detectors.Comment: 14 pages, 2 pictures. Presented at the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, November 4-10, 2001, San Diego, USA. Submitted to IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci (IEEE-TNS

Enabling Technologies for Silicon Microstrip Tracking Detectors at the HL-LHC

While the tracking detectors of the ATLAS and CMS experiments have shown excellent performance in Run 1 of LHC data taking, and are expected to continue to do so during LHC operation at design luminosity, both experiments will have to exchange their tracking systems when the LHC is upgraded to the high-luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) around the year 2024. The new tracking systems need to operate in an environment in which both the hit densities and the radiation damage will be about an order of magnitude higher than today. In addition, the new trackers need to contribute to the first level trigger in order to maintain a high data-taking efficiency for the interesting processes. Novel detector technologies have to be developed to meet these very challenging goals. The German groups active in the upgrades of the ATLAS and CMS tracking systems have formed a collaborative "Project on Enabling Technologies for Silicon Microstrip Tracking Detectors at the HL-LHC" (PETTL), which was supported by the Helmholtz Alliance "Physics at the Terascale" during the years 2013 and 2014. The aim of the project was to share experience and to work together on key areas of mutual interest during the R&D phase of these upgrades. The project concentrated on five areas, namely exchange of experience, radiation hardness of silicon sensors, low mass system design, automated precision assembly procedures, and irradiations. This report summarizes the main achievements

Three-Dimensional Triplet Tracking for LHC and Future High Rate Experiments

The hit combinatorial problem is a main challenge for track reconstruction and triggering at high rate experiments. At hadron colliders the dominant fraction of hits is due to low momentum tracks for which multiple scattering (MS) effects dominate the hit resolution. MS is also the dominating source for hit confusion and track uncertainties in low energy precision experiments. In all such environments, where MS dominates, track reconstruction and fitting can be largely simplified by using three-dimensional (3D) hit-triplets as provided by pixel detectors. This simplification is possible since track uncertainties are solely determined by MS if high precision spatial information is provided. Fitting of hit-triplets is especially simple for tracking detectors in solenoidal magnetic fields. The over-constrained 3D-triplet method provides a complete set of track parameters and is robust against fake hit combinations. The triplet method is ideally suited for pixel detectors where hits can be treated as 3D-space points. With the advent of relatively cheap and industrially available CMOS-sensors the construction of highly granular full scale pixel tracking detectors seems to be possible also for experiments at LHC or future high energy (hadron) colliders. In this paper tracking performance studies for full-scale pixel detectors, including their optimisation for 3D-triplet tracking, are presented. The results obtained for different types of tracker geometries and different reconstruction methods are compared. The potential of reducing the number of tracking layers and -- along with that -- the material budget using this new tracking concept is discussed. The possibility of using 3D-triplet tracking for triggering and fast online reconstruction is highlighted.Comment: Proceedings of the WIT2014 Workshop on Intelligent Tracking. 10 Pages, 8 figures. Submitted to JINS

Mapping the depleted area of silicon diodes using a micro-focused X-ray beam

For the Phase-II Upgrade of the ATLAS detector at CERN, the current ATLAS Inner Detector will be replaced with the ATLAS Inner Tracker. The ATLAS Inner Tracker will be an all-silicon detector, consisting of a pixel tracker and a strip tracker. Sensors for the ITk strip tracker are required to have a low leakage current up to bias voltages of -700 V to maintain a low noise and power dissipation. In order to minimise sensor leakage currents, particularly in the high-radiation environment inside the ATLAS detector, sensors are foreseen to be operated at low temperatures and to be manufactured from wafers with a high bulk resistivity of several k{\Omega} cm. Simulations showed the electric field inside sensors with high bulk resistivity to extend towards the sensor edge, which could lead to increased surface currents for narrow dicing edges. In order to map the electric field inside biased silicon sensors with high bulk resistivity, three diodes from ATLAS silicon strip sensor prototype wafers were studied with a monochromatic, micro-focused X-ray beam at the Diamond Light Source. For all devices under investigation, the electric field inside the diode was mapped and its dependence on the applied bias voltage was studied. The findings showed that the electric field in each diode under investigation extended beyond its bias ring and reached the dicing edge

Progress Report on an Ultra-compact LumiCal

A new design of a detector module of submillimeter thickness for an electromagnetic calorimeter is presented. It is aimed to be used in the luminometers LumiCal and BeamCal in future linear e$^{+}$e$^{-}$ collider experiments. The module prototypes were produced utilizing novel connectivity schemes technologies. They are installed in a compact prototype of the calorimeter and tested at DESY with an electron beam of 1 GeV $-$ 6 GeV. The performance of eight detector modules and the possibility of electron and photon identification is studied.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, Talk presented at the International Workshop on Future Linear Colliders (LCWS2016), Morioka, Japa