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EUDAQ is a generic data acquisition software developed for use in conjunction with common beam telescopes at charged particle beam lines. Providing high-precision reference tracks for performance studies of new sensors, beam telescopes are essential for the research and development towards future detectors for high-energy physics. As beam time is a highly limited resource, EUDAQ has been designed with reliability and ease-of-use in mind. It enables flexible integration of different independent devices under test via their specific data acquisition systems into a top-level framework. EUDAQ controls all components globally, handles the data flow centrally and synchronises and records the data streams. Over the past decade, EUDAQ has been deployed as part of a wide range of successful test beam campaigns and detector development applications., Comment: 32 pages, 11 figures

The ATLAS experiment at the LHC is planning upgrades of its pixel detector to cope with the luminosity increase foreseen in the coming years within the transition from LHC to Super-LHC (SLHC/HL-LHC). Associated with the increase in instantaneous luminosity is a rise of the target integrated luminosity from 730 to about 3000 fb−1 which directly translates into significantly higher radiation damage. These upgrades consist of the installation of a 4th pixel layer, the insertable b-layer IBL, with a mean sensor radius of only 32 mm from the beam axis, before 2016/17. In addition, the complete pixel detector will be exchanged before 2020/21. Being very close to the beam, the radiation damage of the IBL sensors might be as high as 5 × 10 15 n eq cm − 2 at their end-of-life. The total fluence of the innermost pixel layer after the SLHC upgrade might even reach 2 × 10 16 n eq cm − 2 . To investigate the radiation hardness and suitability of the current ATLAS pixel sensors for these fluences, n+-in-n silicon pixel sensors from the ATLAS Pixel production have been irradiated by reactor neutrons to the IBL design fluence and been tested with pions at the SPS and with electrons from a 90Sr source in the laboratory. The collected charge after IBL fluences was found to exceed 10 000 electrons per MIP at 1 kV of bias voltage which is in agreement with data collected with strip sensors. After SLHC fluences, still reliable operation of the devices could be observed with a collected charge of more than 5000 electrons per MIP.

The ATLAS experiment at the LHC is planning to upgrade its pixel detector by the installation of a 4th pixel layer, the insertable b-layer IBL with a mean sensor radius of only 32 mm from the beam axis. Being very close to the beam, the radiation damage of the IBL sensors might be as high as 5×1015 neq cm−2 at their end-of-life. To investigate the radiation hardness and suitability of the current ATLAS pixel sensors for IBL fluences, n+-in-n silicon pixel sensors from the ATLAS Pixel production have been irradiated by reactor neutrons to the IBL design fluence and been tested with pions at the SPS and with electrons from a 90Sr source in the laboratory. The collected charge was found to exceed 10 000 electrons per MIP at 1 kV of bias voltage which is in agreement with data collected with strip sensors. With an expected threshold of 3000–4000 electrons, this result suggests that planar n+-in-n pixel sensors are radiation hard enough to be used as IBL sensor technology.

A new type of n-in-p planar pixel sensors have been developed at KEK/HPK in order to cope with the maximum particle fluence of 1–3×1016 1 MeV equivalent neutrons per square centimeter ( n eq / cm 2 ) in the upcoming LHC upgrades. Four n-in-p devices were connected by bump-bonding to the new ATLAS Pixel front-end chip (FE-I4A) and characterized before and after the irradiation to 2×1015 n eq / cm 2 . These planar sensors are 150 μ m thick, using biasing structures made out of polysilicon or punch-through dot and isolation structures of common or individual p-stop. Results of measurements with radioactive 90Sr source and with a 120 GeV/c momentum pion beam at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) are presented. The common p-stop isolation structure shows a better performance than the individual p-stop design, after the irradiation. The flat distribution of the collected charge in the depth direction after the irradiation implies that the effect of charge trapping is small, at the fluence, with the bias voltage well above the full depletion voltage.

Results of beam tests with planar silicon pixel sensors aimed towards the ATLAS Insertable B-Layer and High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) upgrades are presented. Measurements include spatial resolution, charge collection performance and charge sharing between neighbouring cells as a function of track incidence angle for different bulk materials. Measurements of n-in-n pixel sensors are presented as a function of fluence for different irradiations. Furthermore p-type silicon sensors from several vendors with slightly differing layouts were tested. All tested sensors were connected by bump-bonding to the ATLAS Pixel read-out chip. We show that both n-type and p-type tested planar sensors are able to collect significant charge even after integrated fluences expected at HL-LHC., 28 pages, 27 figures, published on Journal of Instrumentation (JINST)

The ATLAS detector at CERN is a general-purpose experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The ATLAS Pixel Detector is the innermost tracking detector of ATLAS and requires a sufficient level of hermeticity to achieve superb track reconstruction performance. The current planar n-type pixel sensors feature a pixel matrix of n+-implantations which is (on the opposite p-side) surrounded by so-called guard rings to reduce the high voltage stepwise towards the cutting edge and an additional safety margin. Because of the inactive region around the active area, the sensor modules have been shingled on top of each other's edge which limits the thermal performance and adds complexity in the present detector. The first upgrade phase of the ATLAS pixel detector will consist of the insertable b-layer (IBL), an additional b-layer which will be inserted into the present detector in 2013. Several changes in the sensor design with respect to the existing detector had to be applied to comply with the IBL's specifications and are described in detail. A key issue for the ATLAS upgrades is a flat arrangement of the sensors. To maintain the required level of hermeticity in the detector, the inactive sensor edges have to be reduced to minimize the dead space between the adjacent detector modules. Unirradiated and irradiated sensors with the IBL design have been operated in test beams to study the efficiency performance in the sensor edge region and it was found that the inactive edge width could be reduced from 1100 μm to less than 250 μm.