Tony Affolder | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Impact of Cold Noise on the tracking performance of ATLAS ITk short strip barrel modules using a charged particle beam

The inner tracking system of the ATLAS experiment will be upgraded to a full silicon detector in 2030 for HL-LHC. The new tracking system is called ITk, the Inner Tracker. It is required to be operable with efficiency higher than 99\% and noise hit occupancy smaller than 0.1\%. During the pre-production phase of the ITk project, many short-strip modules were observed to exhibit so-called "Cold Noise (CN)", wherein clusters of strips displayed very high noise when the modules were operated at temperatures below~$-35\degree$C. To investigate the CN impact and ensure the quality of module production, huge amount of effort have been put in by the collaboration. This paper focuses on the impact of CN on the tracking performance by examining two short strip modules that exhibit CN: one is non-irradiated, while the other one has been irradiated to the maximum expected end-of-lifetime fluence. For each module, the global and single strip tracking performance are evaluated.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2025

Quality Concerns Caused by Quality Control -- deformation of silicon strip detector modules in thermal cycling tests

The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is currently preparing to replace its present Inner Detector (ID) with the upgraded, all-silicon Inner Tracker (ITk) for its High-Luminosity upgrade (HL-LHC). The ITk will consist of a central pixel tracker and the outer strip tracker, consisting of about 19,000 strip detector modules. Each strip module is assembled from up to two sensors, and up to five flexes (depending on its geometry) in a series of gluing, wirebonding and quality control steps. During detector operation, modules will be cooled down to temperatures of about -35C (corresponding to the temperature of the support structures on which they will be mounted) after being initially assembled and stored at room temperature. In order to ensure compatibility with the detector's operating temperature range, modules are subjected to thermal cycling as part of their quality control process. Ten cycles between -35C and +40C are performed for each module, with full electrical characterisation tests at each high and low temperature point. As part of an investigation into the stress experienced by modules during cooling, it was observed that modules generally showed a change in module shape before and after thermal cycling. This paper presents a summary of the discovery and understanding of the observed changes, connecting them with excess module stress, as well as the resulting modifications to the module thermal cycling procedure.

hep-ex↗