High Luminosity Upgrade Of The Large Hadron Collider Research Articles

Advanced examination of Nb3Sn coils and conductors for the LHC luminosity upgrade: a methodology based on computed tomography and materialographic analyses

The future of particle accelerators is strongly linked to the development of high—field magnets. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is currently developing Nb3Sn-based magnets for the high-luminosity upgrade of the large hadron collider (HL-LHC), to fully exploit its potential and surpass the intrinsic performance limitations of Nb–Ti-based magnets. The fabrication of Nb3Sn magnets is a challenging process as it requires managing the brittle and strain sensitive conductor after the reaction heat treatment to generate the superconducting phase. Accelerator magnet coils are usually manufactured following the wind-react-and-impregnate fabrication process. This reduces the difficulty of working with brittle compounds but adds uncertainties associated with volume change during phase transition and thermal expansion/contraction differentials during the temperature ramps of the heat treatment and cooldown to cryogenic temperatures. To investigate the root causes of performance limitation or degradation observed on HL-LHC magnet prototypes, several Nb3Sn-based coils have been examined. The present paper illustrates an innovative methodology of investigations of the root causes at several fabrication stages and after cooldown and powering. The approach is based on a sequence of mesoscale observations of whole coil sections by an innovative high—energy linac x-ray computed tomography, followed by materialographic assessment of internal events, geometrical distortions and potential flaws using light microscopy. Additionally, scanning electron microscopy and focused ion beam were used to analyze damage at localized positions. This comprehensive approach provides an in-depth view of the examined coils by characterizing atypical features and imperfections in both the strands and the glass fiber/resin of the insulation system, univocally associating the limiting quenches experienced by the coils to identified physical events.

The upgrade of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter for HL-LHC

The High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN aims to achieve unprecedented levels of instantaneous and integrated luminosities, approximately 5 × 1034 cm-2 s-1 and 3000 fb-1, respectively. It is anticipated that each bunch-crossing will result in an average of 140 to 200 collisions (pileup). The lead tungstate crystals and avalanche photodiodes (APDs) in the barrel region of the electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) will remain effective. However the readout and trigger electronics will undergo complete replacement to keep the current level of performance. A dual gain trans-impedance amplifier and an application-specific integrated circuit will be installed, providing two 160 MS/s analog-to-digital converter channels, gain selection, and data compression. The increase in noise within the APDs, due to radiation-induced dark current, will be alleviated by reducing the operating temperature of the ECAL. Additionally, the trigger primitive formation will be shifted away from the detector and handled by powerful and flexible field-programmable gate array processors housed on the back-end electronics cards.In this document, the complete ECAL barrel readout chain design and the current state of research and development for each individual component regarding the upgrade will be described. The outcomes of recent test beam campaigns conducted at the CERN SPS, exploiting electron beams with energies of up to 250 GeV, will also be summarized. Notably, measurements pertaining to the energy resolution performance of the latest prototypes of HL-LHC ECAL readout electronics will be presented.

The ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider: a description of the detector configuration for Run 3

The ATLAS detector is installed in its experimental cavern at Point 1 of the CERN Large Hadron Collider. During Run 2 of the LHC, a luminosity of ℒ = 2 × 1034 cm-2 s-1 was routinely achieved at the start of fills, twice the design luminosity. For Run 3, accelerator improvements, notably luminosity levelling, allow sustained running at an instantaneous luminosity of ℒ = 2 × 1034 cm-2 s-1, with an average of up to 60 interactions per bunch crossing. The ATLAS detector has been upgraded to recover Run 1 single-lepton trigger thresholds while operating comfortably under Run 3 sustained pileup conditions. A fourth pixel layer 3.3 cm from the beam axis was added before Run 2 to improve vertex reconstruction and b-tagging performance. New Liquid Argon Calorimeter digital trigger electronics, with corresponding upgrades to the Trigger and Data Acquisition system, take advantage of a factor of 10 finer granularity to improve triggering on electrons, photons, taus, and hadronic signatures through increased pileup rejection. The inner muon endcap wheels were replaced by New Small Wheels with Micromegas and small-strip Thin Gap Chamber detectors, providing both precision tracking and Level-1 Muon trigger functionality. Trigger coverage of the inner barrel muon layer near one endcap region was augmented with modules integrating new thin-gap resistive plate chambers and smaller-diameter drift-tube chambers. Tile Calorimeter scintillation counters were added to improve electron energy resolution and background rejection. Upgrades to Minimum Bias Trigger Scintillators and Forward Detectors improve luminosity monitoring and enable total proton-proton cross section, diffractive physics, and heavy ion measurements. These upgrades are all compatible with operation in the much harsher environment anticipated after the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC and are the first steps towards preparing ATLAS for the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC. This paper describes the Run 3 configuration of the ATLAS detector.

The CMS Fast Beam Condition Monitor for HL-LHC

The high-luminosity upgrade of the LHC brings unprecedented requirements for real-time and precision bunch-by-bunch online luminosity measurement and beam-induced background monitoring. A key component of the CMS Beam Radiation, Instrumentation and Luminosity system is a stand-alone luminometer, the Fast Beam Condition Monitor (FBCM), which is fully independent from the CMS central trigger and data acquisition services and able to operate at all times with a triggerless readout. FBCM utilizes a dedicated front-end application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) to amplify the signals from CO2-cooled silicon-pad sensors with a timing resolution of a few nanoseconds, which enables the measurement of the beam-induced background. FBCM uses a modular design with two half-disks of twelve modules at each end of CMS, with four service modules placed close to the outer edge to reduce radiation-induced aging. The electronics system design adapts several components from the CMS Tracker for power, control and read-out functionalities. The dedicated FBCM23 ASIC contains six channels and adjustable shaping time to optimize the noise with regards to sensor leakage current. Each ASIC channel outputs a single binary high-speed asynchronous signal carrying time-of-arrival and time-over-threshold information. The chip output signal is digitized,encoded, and sent via a radiation-hard gigabit transceiverand an optical link to the back-end electronics for analysis. This paper reports on the updated design of the FBCM detector and the ongoing testing program.

Overview of material choices for HL-LHC collimators

In view of the High-Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN, different materials were investigated for the upgrade of the LHC collimation system. A key objective was to determine how the jaws of the new collimators could be manufactured to meet the demanding requirements of HL-LHC, such as thermo-mechanical robustness and stability, beam coupling impedance, Ultra-High Vacuum (UHV), etc. During the Long-Shutdown 2 (LS2), five primary and ten secondary low-impedance collimators were already produced using novel materials. For LS3, in addition to more secondary collimators, the production and installation of other types of devices, including tertiaries and physics-debris collimators, is planned. This paper details the final mate-rial choices and rationale for each collimator family.

Characterization of the longitudinal beam coupling impedance and mitigation strategy for the fast extraction kicker KFA79 in the CERN PS

In the framework of the High Luminosity Upgrade of the LHC (HL-LHC) the beam intensity from the injectors must be doubled while keeping longitudinal beam parameters unchanged. As such, high-quality beams with high intensities are required also from the Proton Synchrotron (PS). The beam coupling impedance plays a crucial role and mitigation measures must be taken to remain within a stringent impedance budget. Kicker magnets are important contributors to the overall broadband impedance of the PS. Moreover, the detailed study of kicker impedances revealed additional resonant modes which may be critical for the beam stability. The longitudinal beam coupling impedance for the fast extraction kicker KFA79 is presented in this study, and a solution to reduce the impedance of the critical resonant modes is introduced. Electromagnetic (EM) simulations have been performed to determine the impedance behaviour. Finally, the insertion of transition pieces between magnet modules is presented as a measure for mitigating the low frequency resonant impedance contributions.

Machine Learning for Real-Time Processing of ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter Signals with FPGAs

With the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC, the number of simultaneous proton-proton collisions will be increased to up to 200. This requires an extensive overhaul of the detector systems. For the ATLAS Liquid Argon calorimeter electronics, 556 high performance FPGAs will be installed to reconstruct the energy for all 182 468 cells at the LHC bunch crossing frequency of 40 MHz. However, the current digital filter used for energy reconstruction (optimal filter) decreases in performance under these high pileup conditions. We demonstrate, that small recurrent or convolutional neural networks can outperform the optimal filter. Prototype implementations of the respective inference code in VHDL show, that the use of these networks on FPGAs is feasible and the resulting firmware fits onto the planned Intel Agilex devices. The full design is capable of processing 384 detector cells per FPGA, by combining parallel instances of the firmware with time division multiplexing.

The mass production of silicon sensors for the Phase-2 CMS Outer Tracker

The high luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) will create a more challenging and demanding environment for the operation of the CMS detector. The peak instantaneous luminosity of the HL-LHC machine will reach 5–7 × 1034 cm-2s-1, which by the end of its lifetime will have delivered up to 4000 fb-1. To cope with these conditions the CMS Tracker will be fully replaced with a more advanced system. The new sub-detector is divided into an Outer Tracker, instrumented by short strips and macro pixels, and a more granular Inner Tracker using pixelated sensors. This report will describe some features of the new Outer Tracker silicon sensors and modules, provide results indicating the quality of the sensors produced to date, as well as the robustness of the sensors against environmental factors such as relative humidity.

Isothermal annealing of radiation defects in silicon bulk material of diodes from 8” silicon wafers

The high luminosity upgrade of the LHC will provide unique physics opportunities, such as the observation of rare processes and precision measurements. However, the accompanying harsh radiation environment will also pose unprecedented challenged to the detector performance and hardware. In this paper, we study the radiation induced damage and its macroscopic isothermal annealing behaviour of the bulk material from new 8” silicon wafers using diode test structures. The sensor properties are determined through measurements of the diode capacitance and leakage current for three thicknesses, two material types, and neutron fluences from 6.5· 1014 to 1 · 1016 neq/cm2.

Numerical Assessment of the Inhomogeneous Temperature Field and the Quality of Heat Extraction of Nb3Sn Impregnated Magnets for the High Luminosity Upgrade of the LHC

The High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN foresees the installation of Nb <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> Sn-based quadrupole magnets at selected interaction points of the accelerator. The precise knowledge of each magnet's thermal characteristics and heat extraction performance in response to power depositions during both nominal and ultimate conditions is essential in determining safe operating margins. A 2D numerical framework has been developed to systematically assess the temperature distribution in the combined magnet structure-superfluid He system of each magnet and enveloping cold mass using open-source software. Here a full cross-section of a magnet cold mass is modelled, under the power density distribution expected at the most exposed longitudinal position during accelerator operation at an instantaneous luminosity of 5.0x10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">34</sup> cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-2</sup> s <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> , corresponding to the nominal conditions for HL-LHC. Temperature maps and margins are presented for the inner triplet magnets (MQXF) for both horizontal and vertical beam crossing conditions, along with the validation of the design of cold mass cooling channels for heat extraction.

RRP Nb3Sn Subelement Shear Dependence on Hexagonal Subelement Stack Orientation and the Strand's Position Within a Rutherford Cable

Superconducting strands built into Rutherford cables undergo high deformation at the cable edges. This deformation negatively impacts subelement integrity and subsequently the Residual Resistance Ratio (RRR) of the stabilization Cu in Nb <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> Sn strands after heat treatment due to compromised diffusion barriers [1]. Rutherford cables for the high luminosity upgrade of the LHC at CERN (HL-LHC) use Restack Rod Process (RRP) Nb <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> Sn wires with a 108/127 subelement stack. Numerous transverse cross-sectional samples from the cables made under the HL-LHC Accelerator Upgrade Project (“HL-LHC AUP”) [2] have been mounted, polished, and analyzed with light microscopy. The number of sheared subelements within a strand was seen to depend not only on a strand's position in the overall cable (i.e. center vs. edge), but also on its specific position within the cable edge. Moreover, the rotational angle of the subelement stack within a strand, relative to the cable's centerline plane, appears to play a role. There is a need to understand these dependencies, as they might impact the applicability of any criterion for a maximum number of sheared subelements (typically < 15% of subelements) applied to series production quality assurance, often imposed to ensure acceptable RRR degradation. By gathering data across many HL-LHC AUP cables and utilizing a more statistical approach, we aim to establish more accurate success criteria for future R&D cables using RRP wire when the available cable runs (and thus samples) are limited.

Application of Distributed Fiber Optic Strain Sensors to LMQXFA Cold Mass Welding

The future High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN will include the low-beta inner triplets (Q1, Q2a/b, Q3) for two LHC insertion regions. The Q1, Q3 components consist of eight 10 m-long LMQXFA cryo-assemblies fabricated by the HL-LHC Accelerator Upgrade Project. Each LMQXFA Cold mass contains two Nb3Sn magnets connected in series. A stainless-steel shell is welded around the two magnets before the insertion into the cryostat. There is a limit on how much coil preload increase induced by the shell welding is allowed. Distributed Rayleigh backscattering fiber optics sensors were used for the first time to obtain a strain map over a wide area of a Nb3Sn magnet cold mass shell. Data were collected during welding of the first LMQXFA cold mass and the results confirm that the increase of the coil pole azimuthal pre-stress after welding do not exceed requirements.

The MBRD Dipoles for the Luminosity Upgrade at the LHC: From Prototype Tests to the Series Production

The recombination dipoles MBRD for the High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN are double-aperture superconducting magnets generating a central magnetic field of 4.5 T in a 105 mm diameter bore, directed in the same direction in both apertures. The integrated magnetic field is 35 T-m in a magnetic length of 7.78 m: with respect to the corresponding magnet presently installed in LHC, the aperture is larger, the length is smaller and the central field is higher. The project, currently underway, includes the fabrication by ASG Superconductors and testing at CERN of a short model (1.6 m long), a prototype, and a series of 4 + 2 spare dipoles. The short model was delivered to CERN and successfully tested in a vertical cryostat in summer 2020, reaching nominal current after three quenches in the second thermal cycle, validating most of the mechanical, thermal and electrical design and giving indications for improvements that have been implemented in the prototype, which was completed and delivered to CERN in October 2021. It was tested in October 2022 in its final cold mass, 14 m long, which also includes the two orbit correctors. This contribution reports on key results from the prototype tests and on the further activities related to the construction of the first magnets of the series.

MetaHEP: Meta learning for fast shower simulation of high energy physics experiments

For High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments, the calorimeter is a key detector to measure the energy of particles. Incident particles interact with the material of the calorimeter, creating cascades of secondary particles, so-called showers. A detailed description of the showering process relies on simulation methods that precisely describe all particle interactions with matter. Constrained by the need for precision, the simulation of calorimeters is inherently slow and constitutes a bottleneck for HEP analysis. Furthermore, with the upcoming high luminosity upgrade of the LHC and a much-increased data production rate, the amount of required simulated events will increase. Several research directions have recently investigated the use of Machine Learning based models to accelerate particular calorimeter response simulation. These models typically require a large amount of data and time for training, and the result is a simulation tuned specifically to this configuration. Meta-learning has emerged recently as a fast learning algorithm using small training datasets. In this paper, we use a meta-learning approach that “learns to learn” to generate showers from multiple calorimeter geometries, using a first-order gradient-based algorithm. We present MetaHEP, the first application of the meta-learning approach to accelerate shower simulation using very high granular data and using one of the calorimeters proposed for the Future Circular Collider (FCC), a next-generation of high-performance particle colliders.

Evaluation of HPK [formula omitted] planar pixel sensors for the CMS Phase-2 upgrade

To cope with the challenging environment of the planned high luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), scheduled to start operation in 2029, CMS will replace its entire tracking system. The requirements for the tracker are largely determined by the long operation time of 10 years with an instantaneous peak luminosity of up to 7.5 × 1034cm−2s−1 in the ultimate performance scenario. Depending on the radial distance from the interaction point, the silicon sensors will receive a particle fluence corresponding to a non-ionising energy loss of up to Φeq= 3.5 × 1016cm−2. This paper focuses on planar pixel sensor design and qualification up to a fluence of Φeq = 1.4 × 1016cm−2.For the development of appropriate planar pixel sensors an R&D program was initiated, which includes n+-p sensors on 150mm (6”) wafers with an active thickness of 150µm with pixel sizes of 100×25 µm2 and 50×50 µm2 manufactured by Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (HPK). Single chip modules with ROC4Sens and RD53A readout chips were made. Irradiation with protons and neutrons, as well was an extensive test beam campaign at DESY were carried out. This paper presents the investigation of various assemblies mainly with ROC4Sens readout chips. It demonstrates that multiple designs fulfil the requirements in terms of breakdown voltage, leakage current and efficiency. The single point resolution for 50×50 µm2 pixels is measured as 4.0µm for non-irradiated samples, and 6.3µm after irradiation to Φeq = 7.2 × 1015cm−2.

Optimizing the use of pressurized bladders for the assembly of HL-LHC MQXFB magnets

The use of pressurized bladders for stress control of superconducting magnets was firstly proposed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the early 2000s. Since then, the so-called ‘bladders and keys’ procedure has become one of the reference techniques for the assembly of high-field accelerator magnets and demonstrators. Exploiting the advantages of this method is today of critical importance for Nb3Sn-based accelerator magnets, whose production requires the preservation of tight stress targets in the superconducting coils to limit the effects of the strain sensitivity and brittleness of the conductor. The present manuscript reports on the results of an experimental campaign focused on the optimization of the ‘bladders and keys’ assembly process in the MQXFB quadrupoles. These 7.2 m long magnets shall be among the first Nb3Sn cryomagnets to be installed in a particle accelerator as a part of the High Luminosity upgrade of the LHC. One of the main practical implications of the bladders technique, especially important when applied to long magnets like MQXFB, is that to insert the loading keys, the opening of a certain clearance in the support structure is required. The procedure used so far for MQXF magnets involved an overstress in the coils during bladder inflation. The work presented here shows that such an overshoot can be eliminated thanks to additional bladders properly positioned in the structure. This optimized method was validated in a short model magnet and in a full-length mechanical model, becoming the new baseline for the series production at CERN Furthermore, the results are supported by numerical predictions using finite element models.

Test beam performance of a CBC3-based mini-module for the Phase-2 CMS Outer Tracker before and after neutron irradiation

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will undergo major upgrades to increase the instantaneous luminosity up to 5–7.5×1034 cm-2s-1. This High Luminosity upgrade of the LHC (HL-LHC) will deliver a total of 3000–4000 fb-1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13–14 TeV. To cope with these challenging environmental conditions, the strip tracker of the CMS experiment will be upgraded using modules with two closely-spaced silicon sensors to provide information to include tracking in the Level-1 trigger selection. This paper describes the performance, in a test beam experiment, of the first prototype module based on the final version of the CMS Binary Chip front-end ASIC before and after the module was irradiated with neutrons. Results demonstrate that the prototype module satisfies the requirements, providing efficient tracking information, after being irradiated with a total fluence comparable to the one expected through the lifetime of the experiment.

Radiation tolerance studies of the HV-mux GaNFETs for the HL-LHC ATLAS ITk Strip detector

For the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC, the current ATLAS inner detector will be replaced with a new silicon charged-particle tracker, the ITk, which consists of the ITk Pixel and the ITk Strip subdetector. The high voltage multiplexing (HV-Mux) GaNFETs are radiation-tolerant transistors that permit switching off high voltage to malfunctioning sensors on the ITk Strip modules. To ensure the reliability of the GaNFETs in the high radiation environment expected at the HL-LHC, a sample of the production batch was exposed to gamma radiation. The GaNFETs were characterized pre-irradiation and post-irradiation, and monitored during irradiation.

Current status of the end-of-substructure (EoS) card project for the ATLAS strip tracker upgrade using final ASICs

In the context of the high-luminosity upgrade of the LHC and ATLAS, the microstrip-tracking detector will be redesigned. The main building blocks are substructures with multiple sensors and their electronics. Each substructure will have a single interface to the off-detector system, the so-called End-of-Substructure (EoS) card. Its physical realisation is a set of printed circuit boards (PCBs). The PCB integrates ASICs and hybrids, which multiplex or demultipex the data and transmit with a rate up to 10 Gb/s or receive with a rate up to 2.5 Gb/s on optical fibres. These active parts are developed at CERN and are known as lpGBT and VTRx+. The EoS card integrates the active parts with the required electronics for the specified operation and within the mechanical constraints of the detector. In this paper critical design aspects such as the low-impedance powering scheme and the PCB setup are described. The EoS card has reached its final state for a series production, including the required setups for quality control. The achieved transmission quality on the 10 Gb/s links is presented.

Projecting the socio-economic impact of a big science center: the world’s largest particle accelerator at CERN

ABSTRACT Public investment in Big Science generates social benefits that can ultimately support economic growth. This paper implements a model for the social Cost – Benefit Analysis (CBA) of Big Science and relies on Monte Carlo methods to quantify the uncertainty of long-term projections. We evaluate social costs and benefits of the High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN up to 2038. Monte Carlo simulations show that there is a 94% chance to observe a positive net present value for society. The attractiveness of CERN for Early Stage Researchers and technological spillovers for collaborating firms are key for a positive CBA result. Cultural effects, especially those related to onsite visitors, also contribute to generating societal benefits.