Speaker
Description
Summary
In December 2009 the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recorded the first proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 900 GeV and this was followed by the unprecedented energy of 7 TeV in March 2010. The SemiConductor Tracker (SCT) is the key precision tracking device in ATLAS, made up from silicon micro-strip detectors processed in the planar p-in-n technology. The signal from the strips is processed in the front-end ASICS ABCD3TA, working in the binary readout mode. Data is transferred to the off-detector readout electronics via optical fibers.
The completed SCT has been installed inside the ATLAS experimental hall. Since then the detector was operated for 2 years under realistic conditions. Calibration data has been taken and analysed to determine the noise performance of the system. In addition, extensive commissioning with cosmic ray events has been performed both with and without magnetic field. The sensor behaviour in magnetic field was studied by measurements of the Lorentz angle. After this commissioning phase it arrived to the first LHC pp collision runs in very good shape: 99.3% of the SCT strips are operational, noise occupancy and hit efficiency exceed the design specifications, the alignment is already close enough to the ideal one to allow on-line track reconstruction and invariant mass determination.
In the talk the current status of the SCT will be reviewed, including results from the latest data-taking periods in 2009 and 2010, and from the detector alignment. We will report on the operation of the detector including overviews on services, connectivity and observed problems. The main emphasis will be given to the performance of the SCT with the LHC in collision mode and to the performance of individual electronic components. The SCT commissioning and running experience will then be used to extract valuable lessons for future silicon strip detector projects.
