Laser calibration of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter during LHC Run 2

This article reports the laser calibration of the hadronic Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment in the LHC Run 2 data campaign. The upgraded Laser II calibration system is described. The system was commissioned during the first LHC Long Shutdown, exhibiting a stability better than 0.8% for the laser light monitoring. The methods employed to derive the detector calibration factors with data from the laser calibration runs are also detailed. These allowed to correct for the response fluctuations of the 9852 photomultiplier tubes of the Tile Calorimeter with a total uncertainty of 0.5% plus a luminosity-dependent sub-dominant term. Finally, we report the regular monitoring and performance studies using laser events in both standalone runs and during proton collisions. These studies include channel timing and quality inspection, and photomultiplier linearity and response dependence on anode current

High nitrogen fertilization and stem leaning have overlapping effects on wood formation in poplar but invoke largely distinct molecular pathways.

Previous studies indicated that high nitrogen fertilization may impact secondary xylem development and alter fibre anatomy and composition. The resulting wood shares some resemblance with tension wood, which has much thicker cell walls than normal wood due to the deposition of an additional layer known as the G-layer. This report compares the short-term effects of high nitrogen fertilization and tree leaning to induce tension wood, either alone or in combination, upon wood formation in young trees of Populus trichocarpa (Torr. and Gray) × P. deltoides Bartr. ex Marsh. Fibre anatomy, chemical composition and transcript profiles were examined in newly formed secondary xylem. Each of the treatments resulted in thicker cell walls relative to the controls. High nitrogen and tree leaning had overlapping effects on chemical composition based on Fourier transform infrared analysis, specifically indicating that secondary cell wall composition was shifted in favour of cellulose and hemicelluloses relative to lignin content. In contrast, the high-nitrogen trees had shorter fibres, whilst the leaning trees had longer fibres that the controls. Microarray transcript profiling carried out after 28 days of treatment identified 180 transcripts that accumulated differentially in one or more treatments. Only 10% of differentially expressed transcripts were affected in all treatments relative to the controls. Several of the affected transcripts were related to carbohydrate metabolism, secondary cell wall formation, nitrogen metabolism and osmotic stress. RT-qPCR analyses at 1, 7 and 28 days showed that several transcripts followed very different accumulation profiles in terms of rate and level of accumulation, depending on the treatment. Our findings suggest that high nitrogen fertilization and tension wood induction elicit largely distinct and molecular pathways with partial overlap. When combined, the two types of environmental cue yielded additive effects

The High Voltage distribution system of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter and its performance during data taking

International audienceThis article documents the characteristics of the high voltage (HV) system of the hadronic calorimeter TileCal of the ATLAS experiment. Such a system is suitable to supply reliable power distribution into particles physics detectors using a large number of PhotoMultiplier Tubes (PMTs). Measurements performed during the 2015 and 2016 data taking periods of the ATLAS detector show that its performance, in terms of stability and noise, fits the specifications. In particular, almost all the PMTs show a voltage instability smaller than 0.5 V corresponding to a gain stability better than 0.5%. A small amount of channels was found not working correctly. To diagnose the origin of such defects, the results of the HV measurements were compared to those obtained using a Laser system. The analysis shows that less than 0.2% of the about 10 thousand HV channels were malfunctioning

The ATLAS detector control system

The ATLAS experiment is one of the multi-purpose experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, constructed to study elementary particle interactions in collisions of high-energy proton beams. Twelve different sub detectors as well as the common experimental infrastructure are controlled and monitored by the Detector Control System (DCS) using a highly distributed system of 140 server machines running the industrial SCADA product PVSS. Higher level control system layers allow for automatic control procedures, efficient error recognition and handling, manage the communication with external systems such as the LHC controls, and provide a synchronization mechanism with the ATLAS data acquisition system. Different databases are used to store the online parameters of the experiment, replicate a subset used for physics reconstruction, and store the configuration parameters of the systems. This contribution describes the computing architecture and software tools to handle this complex and highly interconnected control system