Operation and performance of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter in Run 1

The Tile Calorimeter is the hadron calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Approximately 10,000 photomultipliers collect light from scintillating tiles acting as the active material sandwiched between slabs of steel absorber. This paper gives an overview of the calorimeter’s performance during the years 2008–2012 using cosmic-ray muon events and proton–proton collision data at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8TeV with a total integrated luminosity of nearly 30 fb−1. The signal reconstruction methods, calibration systems as well as the detector operation status are presented. The energy and time calibration methods performed excellently, resulting in good stability of the calorimeter response under varying conditions during the LHC Run 1. Finally, the Tile Calorimeter response to isolated muons and hadrons as well as to jets from proton–proton collisions is presented. The results demonstrate excellent performance in accord with specifications mentioned in the Technical Design Report

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700

Search for the associated production of a Higgs boson with a single top quark in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

The ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider: a description of the detector configuration for Run 3

Abstract The ATLAS detector is installed in its experimental cavern at Point 1 of the CERN Large Hadron Collider. During Run 2 of the LHC, a luminosity of  ℒ = 2 × 1034 cm-2 s-1 was routinely achieved at the start of fills, twice the design luminosity. For Run 3, accelerator improvements, notably luminosity levelling, allow sustained running at an instantaneous luminosity of  ℒ = 2 × 1034 cm-2 s-1, with an average of up to 60 interactions per bunch crossing. The ATLAS detector has been upgraded to recover Run 1 single-lepton trigger thresholds while operating comfortably under Run 3 sustained pileup conditions. A fourth pixel layer 3.3 cm from the beam axis was added before Run 2 to improve vertex reconstruction and b-tagging performance. New Liquid Argon Calorimeter digital trigger electronics, with corresponding upgrades to the Trigger and Data Acquisition system, take advantage of a factor of 10 finer granularity to improve triggering on electrons, photons, taus, and hadronic signatures through increased pileup rejection. The inner muon endcap wheels were replaced by New Small Wheels with Micromegas and small-strip Thin Gap Chamber detectors, providing both precision tracking and Level-1 Muon trigger functionality. Trigger coverage of the inner barrel muon layer near one endcap region was augmented with modules integrating new thin-gap resistive plate chambers and smaller-diameter drift-tube chambers. Tile Calorimeter scintillation counters were added to improve electron energy resolution and background rejection. Upgrades to Minimum Bias Trigger Scintillators and Forward Detectors improve luminosity monitoring and enable total proton-proton cross section, diffractive physics, and heavy ion measurements. These upgrades are all compatible with operation in the much harsher environment anticipated after the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC and are the first steps towards preparing ATLAS for the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC. This paper describes the Run 3 configuration of the ATLAS detector.</jats:p

The ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider: a description of the detector configuration for Run 3

Abstract The ATLAS detector is installed in its experimental cavern at Point 1 of the CERN Large Hadron Collider. During Run 2 of the LHC, a luminosity of  ℒ = 2 × 1034 cm-2 s-1 was routinely achieved at the start of fills, twice the design luminosity. For Run 3, accelerator improvements, notably luminosity levelling, allow sustained running at an instantaneous luminosity of  ℒ = 2 × 1034 cm-2 s-1, with an average of up to 60 interactions per bunch crossing. The ATLAS detector has been upgraded to recover Run 1 single-lepton trigger thresholds while operating comfortably under Run 3 sustained pileup conditions. A fourth pixel layer 3.3 cm from the beam axis was added before Run 2 to improve vertex reconstruction and b-tagging performance. New Liquid Argon Calorimeter digital trigger electronics, with corresponding upgrades to the Trigger and Data Acquisition system, take advantage of a factor of 10 finer granularity to improve triggering on electrons, photons, taus, and hadronic signatures through increased pileup rejection. The inner muon endcap wheels were replaced by New Small Wheels with Micromegas and small-strip Thin Gap Chamber detectors, providing both precision tracking and Level-1 Muon trigger functionality. Trigger coverage of the inner barrel muon layer near one endcap region was augmented with modules integrating new thin-gap resistive plate chambers and smaller-diameter drift-tube chambers. Tile Calorimeter scintillation counters were added to improve electron energy resolution and background rejection. Upgrades to Minimum Bias Trigger Scintillators and Forward Detectors improve luminosity monitoring and enable total proton-proton cross section, diffractive physics, and heavy ion measurements. These upgrades are all compatible with operation in the much harsher environment anticipated after the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC and are the first steps towards preparing ATLAS for the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC. This paper describes the Run 3 configuration of the ATLAS detector.</jats:p

A New Boson with a Mass of 125 GeV Observed with the CMS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider

The Higgs boson was postulated nearly five decades ago within the framework of the standard model of particle physics and has been the subject of numerous searches at accelerators around the world. Its discovery would verify the existence of a complex scalar field thought to give mass to three of the carriers of the electroweak force-the W+, W-, and Z 0 bosons-as well as to the fundamental quarks and leptons. The CMS Collaboration has observed, with a statistical significance of five standard deviations, a new particle produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The evidence is strongest in the diphoton and four-lepton (electrons and/or muons) final states, which provide the best mass resolution in the CMS detector. The probability of the observed signal being due to a random fluctuation of the background is about 1 in 3 x 106. The new particle is a boson with spin not equal to 1 and has a mass of about 1.25 giga-electron volts. Although its measured properties are, within the uncertainties of the present data, consistent with those expected of the Higgs boson, more data are needed to elucidate the precise nature of the new particle