STFC PPRP Capital Equipment Call 2018

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Particle physics, the quest to understand matter, forces and mass generation at the most fundamental level, is never far from the news, particularly the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its discovery of the Higgs boson. Our group has a balanced programme, exploiting the full reach of the LHC in energy and precision (ATLAS, LHCb), as well as other aspects of the unique capabilities of the CERN accelerator complex (NA62). One part of this proposal is to renew our computing capabilities in order to continue to enable the highest quality of analysis of the large volumes of data that these experiments produce, as they continue to operate for a further two decades as the world's premier energy frontier facility. It will also place us well to become involved in large scale data analysis of new experiments. Birmingham University has recently invested heavily in setting up a new suite of clean rooms, the Birmingham Instrumentation Laboratory for Particle Physics and Applications (BILPA), which has transformed our group's capability for large-scale construction and R&D in the area of precision silicon tracking detectors. One major project for the BILPA is to make major contributions to the very large-scale upgrades to the ATLAS detector that are required in order to cope with the unprecedented event rates and radiation environments. In an upgrade to the innermost charged particle tracking detector, we will be constructing intricate `silicon strip' detector modules, requiring around 8000 ultrasonic wire bonds per day. The BILPA also has an extensive R&D programme into detector technologies, both for future experiments and for technology transfer, for example into Medical Physics. In the latter context, we our building detectors for real-time imaging at proton radiotherapy centres. This proposal includes a request for three essential items of equipment that the BILPA requires in order to carry out all of these activities efficiently and to a high standard.