Starting Monday, May 5, for four days we could meet almost a hundred international participants of the final meeting of the Advancement and Innovation for Detectors at Accelerators (AIDAinnova) project in the corridors of the Solid 21 building and the old building of the Institute of Physics.
The project for the development of advanced particle detector systems and related technologies for CERN is coming to an end this year after four years, and the final feedback, but also planning meeting was held in Prague. The AIDAinnova will continue if following Horizon 2020 funding, further funding can be secured. The consortium, consisting of 45 partners from academia, industry and research and technology organisations, sought to improve the efficiency and quality of particle beam testing and irradiation detector facilities by supporting their modernisation and improvement through dedicated innovation activities.
The consortium's challenging task is to prepare the European industry for the large-scale production of HEP detectors, which is why the meeting included an industrial session followed by a presentation and exhibition of the products and instruments under development. The Kochanovska Hall thus witnessed presentations by Pfeiffer Vacuum, Crytur, s.r.o., Foton, s.r.o. and CAEN.
Development of new single crystal scintillators
The team of the Institute of Physics participated in the development of new single crystal scintillators. "We have succeeded in developing a superaccelerated multi-component garnet whose scintillation response has been shortened by more than ten times, up to nanoseconds, while maintaining time resolution. Having these properties makes it a hot candidate for upgrading the calorimetric detector on the LHCb experiment,“ explains Martin Nikl involved in the Calorimetry and Particle ID Working Group (WP8). Moreover, the transfer of technological know-how to CRYTUR, s.r.o. already allows its production under industrial conditions, which is why the Institute of Physics has been invited to join the consortium as a ”Technical Associate" and is now considering a full application to the LHCb.
The new 2.7 GHz bandwidth preamplifier
A team led by Ivo Polák from the same working group worked on R&D and implementation of the SiPM multichannel photodetector system into the particle scintillation detector. This is one of the first applications of 64-channel SiPM in the HEP field. Some parts, such as the disassembled attachment of 64 optical fibers to a 10 × 10 mm2 photodetector with a repeatable accuracy of better than 100 micrometers, are quite unique," comments Ivo Polák, who co-organized the Prague meeting with his team. In their research, they also collaborated with FOTON, s.r.o. As part of the project, they transferred the know-how for a special ADApower supply for SiPM with an implemented function of the SiPM photodetector, which was developed and properly tested by the team. This general problem is highly relevant in the application of any SiPM in a real environment. With the same company, they have jointly developed a 2.7 GHz bandwidth preamplifier that is suitable for the application of processing fast signals from SiPMs.
The project leader Paolo Giacomelli from INFN Bologna and the project administrator Sabrina El Yacoubi from CERN, in their final evaluation of the meeting, highlighted the excellent organisation of the meeting and the quality of the AV service and the speed of the internet connection.
We hope that the continuation of the project being prepared will be successful and that we will again be able to host colleagues at the Institute of Physics.