Commissioning and Performance of the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeters

The ATLAS liquid argon (LAr) calorimeter system consists of an electromagnetic barrel calorimeter and two end-caps with electromagnetic, hadronic and forward calorimeters. The construction of the full calorimeter system is completed since mid-2004. The detector has been operated with LAr at nominal high voltage and fully equipped with readout electronics. Online software, monitoring tools and offline signal reconstruction have been developed for data collection and processing. Extensive tests with calibration pulses have been carried out, and the electronics calibration scheme for all 182468 channels has been exercised. Since Augst 2006, cosmic muon data have been collected together with the rest of the ATLAS detector system as part of the ATLAS commissioning program. The reconstructed LAr signals from energy deposited by cosmic rays are compared to the prediction derived from measured detector parameters and calibration pulses. The uniformity of the detector response within regions that have sufficient cosmic muons are examined. The expected performance of the LAr calorimeter for ATLAS physics, based on previous beam tests and Monte Carlo simulation, is also summarised.Comment: Parallel talk at ICHEP08, Philadelphia, USA, July 2008. 5 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figures; v2: resubmitted article with updated style file provided by the ICHEP proceedings team. No other change

Vertex-Detector R&D for CLIC

A detector concept based on hybrid planar pixel-detector technology is under development for the CLIC vertex detector. It comprises fast, low-power and small-pitch readout ASICs implemented in 65 nm CMOS technology (CLICpix) coupled to ultra-thin sensors via low-mass interconnects. The power dissipation of the readout chips is reduced by means of power pulsing, allowing for a cooling system based on forced gas flow. In this paper the CLIC vertex-detector requirements are reviewed and the current status of R&D on sensors, readout and detector integration is presented.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Talk presented at the 13th Topical Seminar on Innovative Particle and Radiation Detectors (IPRD13), 7 - 10 October 2013, Siena, Ital

Probing Extra Dimensions with ATLAS

In the late nineties several authors suggested that the extra dimensions predicted by string theory might lead to observable effects at high energy colliders. The ATLAS experiment which will start taking data at the LHC in 2007 will be an excellent place to search for such effects. The sensitivity of ATLAS to signatures of Extra Dimensions will be presented.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Proceedings of SUSY06, the 14th International Conference on Supersymmetry and the Unification of Fundamental Interactions, UC Irvine, California, 12-17 June 200

CLIC e+e- Linear Collider Studies - Input to the Snowmass process 2013

This paper addresses the issues in question for Energy Frontier Lepton and Gamma Colliders by the Frontier Capabilities group of the Snowmass 2013 process and is structured accordingly. It will be accompanied by a paper describing the Detector and Physics studies for the CLIC project currently in preparation for submission to the Energy Frontier group.Comment: Submitted to the Snowmass process 2013. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1208.140

CLIC e+e- Linear Collider Studies

This document provides input from the CLIC e+e- linear collider studies to the update process of the European Strategy for Particle Physics. It is submitted on behalf of the CLIC/CTF3 collaboration and the CLIC physics and detector study. It describes the exploration of fundamental questions in particle physics at the energy frontier with a future TeV-scale e+e- linear collider based on the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) two-beam acceleration technique. A high-luminosity high-energy e+e- collider allows for the exploration of Standard Model physics, such as precise measurements of the Higgs, top and gauge sectors, as well as for a multitude of searches for New Physics, either through direct discovery or indirectly, via high-precision observables. Given the current state of knowledge, following the observation of a \sim125 GeV Higgs-like particle at the LHC, and pending further LHC results at 8 TeV and 14 TeV, a linear e+e- collider built and operated in centre-of-mass energy stages from a few-hundred GeV up to a few TeV will be an ideal physics exploration tool, complementing the LHC. Two example scenarios are presented for a CLIC accelerator built in three main stages of 500 GeV, 1.4 (1.5) TeV, and 3 TeV, together with the layout and performance of the experiments and accompanied by cost estimates. The resulting CLIC physics potential and measurement precisions are illustrated through detector simulations under realistic beam conditions.Comment: Submitted to the European Strategy Preparatory Grou

Simulations of CMOS pixel sensors with a small collection electrode, improved for a faster charge collection and increased radiation tolerance

CMOS pixel sensors with a small collection electrode combine the advantages of a small sensor capacitance with the advantages of a fully monolithic design. The small sensor capacitance results in a large ratio of signal-to-noise and a low analogue power consumption, while the monolithic design reduces the material budget, cost and production effort. However, the low electric field in the pixel corners of such sensors results in an increased charge collection time, that makes a fully efficient operation after irradiation and a timing resolution in the order of nanoseconds challenging for pixel sizes larger than approximately forty micrometers. This paper presents the development of concepts of CMOS sensors with a small collection electrode to overcome these limitations, using three-dimensional Technology Computer Aided Design simulations. The studied design uses a 0.18 micrometer process implemented on a high-resistivity epitaxial layer.Comment: Proceedings of the PIXEL 2018 Worksho

PDE-Foam - a probability-density estimation method using self-adapting phase-space binning

Probability Density Estimation (PDE) is a multivariate discrimination technique based on sampling signal and background densities defined by event samples from data or Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations in a multi-dimensional phase space. In this paper, we present a modification of the PDE method that uses a self-adapting binning method to divide the multi-dimensional phase space in a finite number of hyper-rectangles (cells). The binning algorithm adjusts the size and position of a predefined number of cells inside the multi-dimensional phase space, minimising the variance of the signal and background densities inside the cells. The implementation of the binning algorithm PDE-Foam is based on the MC event-generation package Foam. We present performance results for representative examples (toy models) and discuss the dependence of the obtained results on the choice of parameters. The new PDE-Foam shows improved classification capability for small training samples and reduced classification time compared to the original PDE method based on range searching.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures; replaced with revised version accepted for publication in NIM A and corrected typos in description of Fig. 7 and