Not only will they face extreme levels of radiation, the custom-designed equipment also must be extremely lightweight, strong and thermally conductive. Purdue also will design and manufacture the large carbon-fiber structures that support the entire tracking pixel detector. For example, each sensor will have far more memory, so an image can be stored in the sensor until we are ready to read it out." "In addition to precision robotics, we're taking advantage of all of the advances in integrated circuit and computing technology over the past 10 years. "This is the third generation of the CMS detector, and we've been involved in manufacturing the silicon pixel modules since the beginning," Jones said.
The precision required is placement within 10 microns, or roughly one-fifth the diameter of a human hair, and high-density electrical connections with 10 wires per millimeter. In a clean-room facility in the Purdue Physics Building, robotic equipment has been programmed and tested to put together the sensors and circuit boards that form the pixel modules. Purdue is the lead assembly center for the new silicon pixel modules of the inner silicon detector of the CMS and will oversee and coordinate the module assembly at other institutions. Just like the cameras on our phones, a sensor with more pixels produces sharper pictures, and the scientists will be able to see the creation, contributions and indirect effects of these fundamental particles in greater detail than ever before.
#The bleeding edge newsletter upgrade#
The CMS upgrade will shrink the size of each silicon pixel and at the same time extend the detector coverage, with a total of 2 billion silicon pixels to be placed at the center of the upgraded detector. Every 25 nanoseconds debris from the collisions of protons in the beams passes through the pixels, and within it are traces of the lives of elementary particles created only for an instant as the protons are smashed into their constituent pieces. Currently, the heart of the CMS detector is equipped with a high-resolution camera of 80 million individual silicon pixels. The CMS detector is, in essence, a 14,000-ton extremely high-resolution camera the size of a four-story office building that almost completely surrounds one collision point of the LHC beams. At the same time, the upgraded detectors will allow us to capture more of these events and with much better resolution than ever before."
"When the LHC increases the intensity of the proton beams in 2027, it will create an order of magnitude more recorded collisions-perhaps even creating new particles never before seen. "We are trying to find new physics and to test the theoretical models," said Andreas Jung, Purdue professor of physics and astronomy and co-principal investigator on the project. Researchers are hopeful this next phase of the historic particle physics experiment opens the door to a deeper understanding of fundamental physical mysteries, like dark matter and the origins of the universe. But our goal is to understand the nature of the fundamental particles from which our world is built."įrom smashing particles at near the speed of light to the discovery of the Higgs particle and celebration of the Nobel Prize that followed, Purdue researchers have persistently pursued the science alongside their international colleagues at CERN. "We are really at the bleeding edge, and the technological advances from this project will inform fields spanning space exploration, computer science and optics. We have to find materials that will survive this exposure for 10 years without turning to dust," said Matthew Jones, the Purdue professor of physics and astronomy who is a principal investigator on the National Science Foundation-funded project led by Cornell University. "The levels of radiation the detectors will face in this next phase of experiments presents a real challenge.
Over the next five years, the international collaboration will improve by tenfold the sensitivity of the Compact Muon Solenoid, or CMS, detector, and prepare it to endure radiation levels equivalent to the core of a nuclear reactor when CERN increases the intensity of the proton beams in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)-the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world.
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