A Silicon Strip Detector for the Phase II High Luminosity Upgrade of the ATLAS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This thesis details the testing and analysis of the upgraded silicon strip detector for the ATLAS experiment's Phase-II upgrade at the HL-LHC, focusing on performance under high radiation and pile-up conditions.

Contribution

It introduces new methods for analyzing energy loss and radiation damage in silicon detectors, supporting the development of the HL-LHC upgrade systems.

Findings

Successful testing of detector modules and structures

Energy loss analysis enables particle identification

Proposed radiation damage tracking method

Abstract

This thesis presents the work carried out in the testing of the ATLAS Phase-II Upgrade electronic systems in the future strips tracker after 2023, to be installed for operations in the HL-LHC period. The high luminosity and number of interactions per crossing that will happen after the HL-LHC starts require a complete replacement of the ATLAS tracker. The systems that have been defined for the Phase-II Upgrade will be designed to cope with that increased radiation and have the right granularity to maintain the performance with higher pile-up. In this thesis I present results on single modules and larger structures comprising multiple modules. In the context of the current ATLAS Semiconductor Tracker studies, I present an analysis of the data taken by the detector from the beginning of operation in 2010 until the first Long Shut-down in 2013. The analysis consists of an energy loss study in the Semiconductor Tracker, a task the detector was not designed to perform. However, the availability of the Time-over-Threshold of the signals generated by particles traversing the detector elements allows an estimation of the charge deposited by the particles. This calculation of the energy loss is typically used to perform particle identification, a feature that is usually not required from the tracker. In addition, I present a study that proposes the use of this energy loss calculation as a means of tracking radiation damage in the silicon.