Charge collection in Si detectors irradiated in situ at superfluid helium temperature

Volume: 796Silicon and diamond detectors operated in a superfluid helium bath are currently being considered for the upgrade of the LHC beam loss monitoring system. The detectors would be installed in immediate proximity of the superconducting coils of the triplet magnets. We present here the results of the in situ irradiation test for silicon detectors using 23 GeV protons while keeping the detectors at a temperature of 1.9 K Red laser (630 nm) Transient Current Technique and DC current measurements were used to study the pulse response and collected charge for silicon detectors irradiated to a maximum radiation fluence of 1 x 10(16) p/cm(2). The dependence between collected charge and irradiation fluence was parameterized using the Hecht equation and assumption of a uniform electric field distribution. The collected charge was found to degrade with particle fluence for both bias polarities. We observed that the main factor responsible for this degradation was related to trapping of holes on the donor-type radiation-induced defects. In contrast to expectations, along with formation of donors, acceptor-type defects (electron traps) are introduced into the silicon bulk. This suggests that the current models describing charge collection in irradiated silicon detectors require an extension for taking into account trapping at low temperatures with a contribution of shallow levels. New in situ irradiation tests are needed and planned now to extend statistics of the results and gain a deeper insight into the physics of low temperature detector operation in harsh radiation environment. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Beam Loss Monitoring for LHC Machine Protection

The energy stored in the nominal LHC beams is two times 362 MJ, 100 times the energy of the Tevatron. As little as 1 mJ/cm 3 deposited energy quenches a magnet at 7 TeV and 1 J/cm 3 causes magnet damage. The beam dumps are the only places to safely dispose of this beam. One of the key systems for machine protection is the beam loss monitoring (BLM) system. About 3600 ionization chambers are installed at likely or critical loss locations around the LHC ring. The losses are integrated in 12 time intervals ranging from 40 μs to 84 s and compared to threshold values defined in 32 energy ranges. A beam abort is requested when potentially dangerous losses are detected or when any of the numerous internal system validation tests fails. In addition, loss data are used for machine set-up and operational verifications. The collimation system for example uses the loss data for set-up and regular performance verification. Commissioning and operational experience of the BLM are presented: The machine protection functionality of the BLM system has been fully reliable; the LHC availability has not been compromised by false beam aborts