MRI-R2: Development of a Pixel Detector for the Upgraded CMS Experiment

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Particle physics stands at the threshold of a new era of discovery as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) begins colliding-beam operations this fall. With the highest-energy collisions ever created in a laboratory environment, the CMS collaboration (about 1600 physicists world-wide) will study some of the most fundamental questions of our time, such as the origin of mass, the possible existence of supersymmetry, and the hypothetical existence of extra spatial dimensions. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of two general-purpose detectors at the LHC (the other detector is called ATLAS and has a similar number of collaborators), has been designed to discover the new physics of this energy scale. At the heart of CMS is the silicon pixel detector. The current device took years to design and build and represents the state-of-the-art for this type detector. However, it is well known that it will eventually fail due to radiation damage and a new device with enhanced characteristics must be designed and built to take its place. This award funds Professor Alice Bean, Professor of Physics at the University of Kansas, and a consortium of six universities (Kansas, Kansas State, Illinois at Chicago, Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Rice, and Rutgers) to develop a detector that will serve as a research instrument for the design of the phase 1 upgraded silicon pixel detector for CMS.The broader impacts can be divided into two categories - those related to the development of the research and training infrastructure at collaborating institutions and those related to the impacts on the field of high energy physics as a whole. In particle physics the capability to design and build instrumentation is crucial to the success of any university group in this field. This award provides the means for the collaborators to enhance the prestige and capability of the respective institutions at an international level. In addition, the development activities will allow recruiting undergraduate students, especially women and minorities, to help build this instrument and participate in the physics studies and should help attract more students into physics and engineering.