acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

ACM TechNews

Chip Developed by Brazilian Researchers Will Be Linchpin of LHC ­pgrade


View as: Print Mobile App Share:
The new SAMPA chip.

Researchers in the Engineering School of the University of Sao Paulo's have designed a chip to upgrade the detection system in the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE).

Credit: Agencia FAPESP

Researchers at the University of Sao Paulo's Engineering School (Poli-USP) in Brazil have designed a chip to upgrade the detection system in the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE).

A total of 88,000 SAMPA chips will be manufactured for the upgrade, which Poli-USP professor Marcelo Gameiro Munhoz says "will be used to instrument two of ALICE's detectors: the TPC [Time Projection Chamber] and the MCH [Muon Chamber]. The TPC tracks the charged particles produced in the LHC. The MCH specifically measures muons."

Munhoz notes a planned LHC upgrade to boost the rate of collisions between lead nuclei by a factor of 100 necessitates SAMPA "because the existing equipment wouldn't be able to handle such a huge increase in the collision rate."

He says ALICE currently operates at 500 collisions a second, and in 2021 it should operate at 50,000 collisions a second.

From Agencia FAPESP
View Full Article

 

Abstracts Copyright © 2018 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA


 

No entries found

Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account