A program to drive the ATLAS Local Trigger Interface (ALTI) at the ATLAS experiment

Abstract

During the High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the LHC experiments will undergo a series of upgrades in order to maintain high physics performance following an increased data rate. The largest Phase 1 upgrade project at the ATLAS muon system is the replacement of the current inner station (end-cap regions) with the New Small Wheels. In addition, the ATLAS Local Trigger Interface (ALTI), a part of the Timing, Trigger and Control (TTC) system, will replace the four existing TTC modules. In normal operation, the detectors, along with the surrounding electronics, will receive TTC related signals from the Central Trigger Processor (CTP). This information is forwarded to the front-end electronics of each of the ATLAS sub-detectors through an optical network via the ALTI. The interface currently produces an artificially generated pulse pattern that contains the TTC information. This paper will summarize the creation of a program that generates pulse pattern files which are used to drive ALTI. Various tests have been conducted in order to study the performance of the NSW trigger electronics while using these files. Software development and data analysis using ROOT framework were used to validate the results of these tests.