Design, development, characterisation and operation of ATLAS ITk strip staves

Thesis

ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is a general purpose particle physics experiment designed to exploit the physics potential of the Large Hadron Collider. Two further upgrades are planned to increase the luminosity of the LHC, the latter of which ("Phase 2" scheduled for 2023/2026) will give rise to the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). With peak luminosity increased by a factor of 3.75 beyond today's values, a new Inner Tracker (ITk) will be required for ATLAS. An all-silicon design is chosen with a mixture of Pixel and Strip layers.

This thesis documents the electronic system design of the ITk Strip Staves to be used in the barrel region, and presents results from tests of front-end chips, modules and staves built using prototype chipsets made in the same 130 nm technology as will be used in the experiment. Most of the results come from systems using the first of these chipsets, HCC130 / ABC130, but the final chapter documents wafer screening and single chip results using a later prototype chipset, HCCStar / ABCStar, which has a revised front-end amplifier design and an updated data transfer topology which makes greater use of the available bandwidth. Although beyond the scope of this thesis, the first staves built with the latter chipset have recently been completed. The HCCStar and ABCStar designs are presently being reworked to give improved tolerance to Single Event Effects (SEE), leading toward the assembly of the first pre-production staves later this year. The production phase is due to start next year with commissioning of the completed system, in the ATLAS cavern, scheduled to take place in 2025.

Authors: Phillips, PW

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-gjzjmzaxe
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: ITk Strip Staves; Front-End Electronics; ATLAS ITk Strip Detector; Silicon Microstrips
• Subjects: Silicon Microstrip Detector Systems; Detectors for High Energy Physics Experiments