Speaker
Akshay Katre
(Universite de Geneve (CH))
Description
In 2012, a novel strategy was designed to detect signatures of Highly Ionising
Particles (HIPs) such as magnetic monopoles, dyons or Qballs with the ATLAS
trigger system. With proton-proton collisions at a centre of mass enegy of 8
TeV, the trigger was designed to have unique properties as a tracker for HIPs.
It uses only the Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) system, applying an
algorithm distinct from standard tracking ones. The unique high threshold
readout capability of the TRT is used at the location where HIPs in the detector
are looked for. In particular the number and the fraction of TRT high threshold
hits is used to distinguish HIPs from background processes. The trigger requires
significantly lower energy depositions in the electro-magnetic calorimeters as a
seed unlike previously used trigger algorithms for such searches. Thus the new
trigger is capable of probing a large range of HIP masses and charges.
We will give a description of the algorithms for this newly developed trigger
for HIP searches and present results on its performance during the 2012
data-taking, comparing them to previously used triggers for HIP searches.
Furthermore, presented will be higher signal efficiencies in the challenging Run
2 environment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) due to increased centre of mass
energy and luminosity despite of demanding pile-up conditions.
Author
Akshay Katre
(Universite de Geneve (CH))
