The HEP group at CUA studies the building blocks of the universe by helping to record and analyze data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
In order to study these subatomic particles, we build detectors that can record what particles were created in the collisions made by the LHC.
The sub-detector that is closest to the collision point in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is the inner tracker or pixel detector.
The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN is expected to collide protons at a center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV and to reach the unprecedented peak instantaneous luminosity of 7 x 1034 cm-2 s-1 with an average number of pileup events of 200. This will allow the CMS experiments to collect integrated luminosities up to 4000 fb-1during the project lifetime. To cope with this extreme scenario the CMS detector will be substantially upgraded before starting the HL-LHC, a plan known as CMS Phase-2 upgrade or the HL-LHC upgrade. The entire CMS inner tracker (IT) detector will be replaced and the new detector will feature increased radiation hardness, higher granularity and capability to handle higher data rates and longer trigger latency. The detector is composed of pixel sensors with pixel size of 25X100 µm2 and a new ASIC, designed in 65 nm CMOS technology, powered in a novel serial scheme. The system mechanics will be lightweight, based on carbon fiber, with a CO2 cooling. Students will be gluing and testing these inner tracker (pixel) modules in the clean room at CUA.