A group of scientists from the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) visited the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the UK on 19th September 2016. This visit marks the beginning of Chinese and UK cooperation in developing a high precision silicon detector module for the ATLAS ITk upgrade.
At the invitation of Prof. Steve McMahon (Oxford University & RAL), IHEP delegates led by Prof. Xinchou Lou, Director of the Division for Experimental Physics, visited the lab, which is operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Both parties exchanged progress reports and plans and agreed to strengthen their collaboration on the development of the detector modules. This includes IHEP staff going on long term attachments to RAL for module prototyping and production, as well as RAL experts visiting IHEP regularly to help build up the local module production capability. After this fruitful face-to-face discussion meeting, the IHEP delegates were given a tour of RAL’s facilities for advanced silicon detector development.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be upgraded to the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) around 2023. To cope with the increased luminosity and much harsher collision environment, the ATLAS tracker will have to be re-built with state-of-the-art silicon detector technologies and readout electronics. The Institute of High Energy Physics and Tsinghua University have been funded by the MOST National Key Program for S&T Research and Development (Grant No. 2016YFA0400101) to develop high precision silicon detector modules for the outer tracker.
