European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) 13 Month Placement: activity report, July 2007 - August 2008

Abstract

I attended the technical student program at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) from July 2007 to August 2008. More speci cally, I worked with the PHOS (ALICE Photon Spectrometer) detector, which is one of the sub-detectors in ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment). With this report I will try to describe in essence the various activities I was involved in and present them in a step-by-step approach. The following topics will be covered: • The building blocks of our world. My personal introduction to particle physics. • General description of CERN, LHC (Large Hadron Collider), ALICE and PHOS. • Digital design on the TRU (Trigger Region Unit). Card description and design concept analysis. • Digital design on the TOR (Trigger OR). Design concept analysis. • Writing C++ utilities for the RCUs. Description and analysis of o ine control utility and TRU register scanner. • Appendixes which mainly contains information about my experiences working on digital design in Linux, how to interface the electronics through embedded devices (called DCS cards, Detector Control System), and how to communicate with the TRU design through dedicated registers. The goal here is to provide hints and tips that might come in handy for people aiming to resume my work. I assume that the reader possesses basic knowledge regarding electronics and digital circuits. However, most of the introductory material should be easy to understand for anyone interested. I will try to refrain myself from including any code in this document, and rather explain principles with extensive use of graphics. If the reader wants the actual lines of code, look up how to get it in 1.8 (Additional Resources). I strive to keep my code well commented and self-explanatory, and should complement the report when more details are desired. All gures and pictures in this report are to be considered the result of my own work unless otherwise noted. This applies also for written material, where the sources of my knowledge will be mentioned and can be looked up in the bibliography.