A small (11.5 cm x 11.5 cm) clear plastic airtight food storage container contains a green PCB with two small silicon strip sensors mounted on it. The PCB is wired to three coaxial-type ports, that are mounted through the walls of the container.
The container has a burgundy rim around its lid.
Accession Number: 2024.ph.894
Alternative Name:
Primary Materials: Silicon, Plastic, Metal
A white label with black printed lettering is taped to one corner of the PCB. It reads: “MT1”.
Height = 6. Width = 11.5, Length = 11.5.
This is a test module for estimating the effects of radiation exposure on the silicon strip detectors that will be used in the forthcoming Inner Tracker (ITk) that will be installed in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) as part of the High-Luminosity Upgrade. Sensor components of the LHC degrade with time as they are exposed to intense radiation. Quantifying the nature and rate of this degradation is essential to interpreting the readings produced by these sensors.
Such test modules are printed in surplus space along the borders of the silicon wafers from which the strip sensors are manufactured
This item is in good cosmetic condition and has no obvious damage.
Associated Instruments:
Silicon wafers for the strip sensors are made by Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., of Hamamatsu-shi, Japan.
Date of Manufacture: c. 2014
This item was among several artifacts donated by University of Toronto Professor of Physics Robert S. Orr on 31 July, 2024.
V. Benítez, M Ullán, D Quirion, G Pellegrini, C Fleta, M Lozano, D Sperlich, et al. “Sensors for the End-Cap Prototype of the Inner Tracker in the ATLAS Detector Upgrade.” Nuclear Instruments & Methods in Physics Research. Section A, Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment 833 (2016): 226–32.
S. Kuehn, V Benítez, J Fernández-Tejero, C Fleta, M Lozano, M Ullán, H Lacker, et al. “Prototyping of Petalets for the Phase-II Upgrade of the Silicon Strip Tracking Detector of the ATLAS Experiment.” Journal of Instrumentation 13, no. 3 (2018): T03004–T03004.
A very good summation of the ATLAS ITk strip sensor technology, as well as Canada’s contribution to the ATLAS upgrade, can be found in the following MA thesis:
Robert F. H. Hunter 2017, Development and Evaluation of Novel, Large Area, Radiation Hard Silicon Microstrip Sensors for the ATLAS ITk Experiment at the HL-LHC. MA Thesis. Carleton University. Ottawa, Ontario
The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located near Geneva Switzerland near the border with France, is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It began operation in 2010. In 2012, researchers at the LHC announced the discover of the Higgs boson particle. The continued operation of the LHC requireds periodic upgrades to make possible investigations at higher luminosities, as well as to replace detectors that have reached the end of the finite lifespans imposed by the intense radiation environment.
The ATLAS detector is the largest of several detectors along the LHC beam line. The ATLAS ITk (Inner TracKer) is part of the ongoing high-luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN. The high-luminosity upgrade will increase the number of collisions by a factor of between 5 and 7.5. This will involve a significant increase in the radiation to which the sensor components are exposed. For this reason, the ITk design is all solid state, meaning that the design incorporates silicon detectors rather than gas detectors as in the previous Inner Detector (ID) design.
The Inner Tracker consists of an innermost pixel detector system, consisting of pixelated silicon detectors, and an outer strip detector system, incorporating silicon strip detectors such as the module shown here. The strip detector system consists of a barrel section and two end cap sections. The ATLAS ITk upgrade is developed through an international collaboration. Canadian collaborators will assemble and test around one quarter (~1700) of the end cap modules. The University of Toronto High Energy Physics Group focuses on quantifying the effects of radiation exposure on the performance of the sensor module. This is necessary in order to accurately interpret the readings from these sensors as the signal deteriorates due to radiation damage over the 14-year lifespan of the ITk.
As of June 2025, the ATLAS ITk is scheduled for commissioning at the beginning of LHC Run 4, the first run of the high-luminosity upgrade, in June of 2030.