University of Michigan Atlas Project
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PROPOSAL FOR FUNDING
OF THE ATLAS MUON DETECTOR
CONSTRUCTION AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
University of Michigan Atlas Project
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1.0 Overview
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) being built at the European Organization for Nuclear
Research will represent the premier tool in the world for the exploration of the new fron-
tiers in particle physics when it is completed approximately six years from now. With this
facility we expect to be able to address many fundamental topics concerning the origin of
particle masses and composition of matter at the sub-quark level.
Twelve members of the University of Michigan High Energy Physics program (Bob Ball,
Jay Chapman, Ed Diehl, Myron Campbell, Steve Goldfarb, Dan Levin, Shawn McKee,
Homer Neal, Jianming Qian, Greg Tarle’ , Rudi Thu, and Bing Zhou) have committed to
the ATLAS and are working on various aspects of the forward muon detector develop-
ment. Michigan joins the Boston Muon Collaboration and University of Washington in
this effort. The Michigan work will focus on two aspects of the detector development, the
construction of the largest MDT tubes and the development of front-end electronics for
these and other MDT tubes of the system. Rudi Thun is directing the tube construction
project, Bing Zhou the chamber production, and J. Chapman is leading the electronics
development aspects of the project. Other members are engaged in computing aspects of
ATLAS not covered by this proposal. Homer Neal leads these computational projects,
databases, collaboratory development, and networking. J. Chapman has committed to the
testing of TRT electronics, also not covered by this proposal.
For 1998 the US ATLAS collaboration has initially provided a modest $62K of ATLAS
detector funds for Michigan. A second allocation of funds to Michigan in 1998 was pro-
vided as a direct contract to Michigan from Brookhaven. With this second allocation, the
total provided to Michigan for 1998 was $316K. This proposal is for $715.7K and repre-
sents the first full scale operation of the detector construction program at Michigan. The
bulk of these funds, $562K, are for the establishment of the production site and tooling for
the construction of chambers. The electronics development part, $153.7K, is for the devel-
opment of a 10K channels test of the ATLAS front-end electronics. Michigan has coordi-
nation responsibility for the 10K channels test. The Task A proposal submitted as part of
the University of Michigan base program presents the specifics for these projects. The
deliverables and dollar specifics are contained in the attached Amendment to the Memo-
randum of Understanding between US ATLAS and the University of Michigan.
2.0 MDT Chamber Construction
The University of Michigan will be responsible for the R/D, prototyping, construction and
testing of the “Monitored Drift Tube (MDT)” chambers in the forward muon spectrometer
listed in the table below. In total, there will be of the order of 40,000 individual drift tubes
that will have to be constructed for these chambers. Our efforts will include the design,
analysis, manufacture, quality assurance and quality control of the drift tubes, their spac-
University of Michigan Atlas Project
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ers, their alignment, chamber environmental services, their assembly into chambers, and
their delivery to CERN for installation.
The drift tube assembly station development for automatic wire stringing, tensioning and
crimping, automated endplug insertion and crimping, and leak testing of the chambers is
essentially complete. Tube production for module 0 has begun. Since Michigan will build
some of the longest tubes and chambers of the muon system, special considerations when
handling and testing these tubes. To quantify the problems and develop a suitable response
to the challenge of long tubes, Michigan has completed a study of the precision of mea-
surements with these long tubes assuming that they are constructed as straight tubes with
wires that sag under gravity and recommended to the collaboration that chambers be con-
structed in this fashion making use of software corrections to restore the desired resolu-
tion. This simple construction approach will surely be a cost savings.
Work is well underway for the preparation of a large, high-bay assembly area at the Uni-
versity of Michigan where the chambers will be constructed and tested over the period
1999 - 2003.This assembly area includes a 60,000lb precision granite table in an environ-
mentally controlled room. A significant portion of this proposal’ s funding will be directed
to the development of this chamber assembly area. The granite table has been delivered
and is in position. Module 0 is scheduled to be constructed during late 1999 and early
2000.
3.0 MDT Electronics
The MDT chambers are fitted with cards, HedgeHog Cards, that provide the chamber con-
nections and accept daughter cards, Mezzanine Cards, that contain Amplifier-Shaper-Dis-
criminator, ASD, circuits and Time Digitizer circuits, TDCs. The remaining element in
the front-end electronics chain is the ReadOut Driver module, ROD, which connects to
several Mezzanine cards and communicates to the ReadOut Buffer modules located in the
data acquisition system. Members of Michigan’s AT LAS team have updated the specifi-
TABLE 1. MDT Chamber Development Items
WBS Item Deliverable (k$)
1.5.1.2.1. Tube Assembly Station
$33.0
1.5.1.2.2. Tube Test Station $49.0
1.5.1.2.3. Chamber Assembly Station $300.0
1.5.1.2.4. Chamber Test Station $80.0
1.5.1.2.5. Handling/Transport Fixtures $17.0
1.5.1.2.6. General Equipment $23.0
1.5.1.3 MDT Prototypes $60.0
1.5.1. Total Chamber and Tube Construction $562.0
University of Michigan Atlas Project
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cations of the ROD module for the ATLAS muon system. In the process we have per-
suaded the collaboration that a design where the ROD is split into an on-chamber portion,
the Chamber Service Module (CSM), and an off-chamber portion, the Tower Summary
Crate (TSC). A VerilogHDL specification of the CSM has been completed at Michigan
and the first prototype (CSM-0) is being constructed for a June checkout. Simulations of
the data flow through the front-end system have been performed at Michigan in order to
optimize the design. This work has led to CSM specifications that can be synthesized into
FPGA directly from the code used in the simulations. We are constructing the CSM-0
from these synthesized FPGAs. The TSC will next be specified in VerilogHDL with the
intent that the design will evolve from simulations done for the data-flow studies.
3.1 Concluding Remarks
The University of Michigan High Energy program is has established a significant role in
the CERN ATLAS experiment. We have developed one of the 3 sites for forward muon
chamber construction and are rapidly approaching parity with the other sites begun years
earlier. We have accepted the coordination responsibility for development of the 10K
channels development of the ATLAS muon front-end electronics and plan to send the first
readout module, the CSM-0, to the test beam at CERN in August 1999 and to supply cop-
ies of this module to the construction sites for chamber testing. With the addition of sev-
eral new Michigan scientists, the ATLAS effort at Michigan has become a major
contributor to US ATLAS.
TABLE 2. Deliverables for MDT Electronics
WBS Item Deliverable (k$)
1.5.3.1.2. MiniDaQ readout of ASD/TDC
$68.9
1.5.3.1.4. Test Station/PC/Crate/PS/Instrum $64.8
1.5.3.2. Prototype Electronics $20.0
1.5.3. Total Front-end Electronics for 10K Test $153.7