The popular web site Softpedia has written about SMU’s new “world’s fastest integrated circuit” designed for use in the challenging environment of the Large Hadron Collider.
The popular web site Softpedia has written about SMU’s new “world’s fastest integrated circuit” designed for use in the challenging environment of the Large Hadron Collider.
The site, popular for software downloads and science and technology information, noted that the job of the new high-speed integrated circuit was designed for the LHC’s high-radiation environment, as well as for high data bandwidth, low-power dissipation and extremely high reliability. SMU physicist Jingbo Ye, an associate professor of physics, led development of the circuit.
Excerpt: By Tudor Vieru Science Editor
A group of experts from the Southern Methodist University (SMU), in Dallas, announces the development of a new, super-fast circuit designed specifically to augment the capabilities of one of the main particle detectors of the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC is the largest physics experiment ever designed, and its goal is to discover some of the most fundamental knowledge about the Universe and the elementary particles and forces that govern our world.
With the development of the new integrated circuits, called “link-on-chip” or LOC serializer circuits, the team hopes to be able to boost the performances of the LHC’s ATLAS particle detectors, one of the three main instruments in the 27-kilometer-long tunnel of the accelerator. The innovation was designed specifically to be used by the Liquid Argon Calorimeter, an ATLAS sub-detector that could function a lot better, and overall more efficiently, once the new application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) are added. The SMU team is directly involved in the ATLAS collaboration.
There was a large number of factors researchers at the university needed to consider when creating the LOC. In addition, the large amount of radiation that is produced as the LHC collides beams of protons head-on at the highest energy levels ever achieved, there are also other issues to consider. The calorimeter needs to be able to handle a high data bandwidth, low power dissipation, and must feature an extremely high degree of reliability as well. There is very little room for error in an endeavor such as the LHC, and all of its components need to respect a vast array of norms and rules.
This simulated black hole from ATLAS proton collisions would quickly decay into particle debris. Credit: CERN
A new high-speed integrated circuit to reliably transmit data in the demanding environment of the world’s largest physics experiment is the fastest of its kind.
This new “link-on-chip” — or LOC serializer circuit — was designed by physicists at Southern Methodist University in Dallas as a component for use in a key experiment of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator in Europe.
The miniscule SMU LOC serializer was designed for ATLAS, which is the largest particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider.
Jingbo Ye views SMU LOC serializer
The LHC, as it’s called, is a massive, high-tech tunnel about 100 meters underground. Within the LHC’s circular, 17-mile-long tunnel, protons traveling at high energy are smashed together and broken apart so physicists worldwide can analyze the resulting particle shower detailed in a flood of electronic data.
Data holds key to bold new physics discoveries
The data transmits from the LHC via a tiny serializer circuit enabling electronic readouts. Physicists analyze the data to discover answers to unsolved scientific mysteries such as the Big Bang, dark matter, black holes, the nature of the universe and the Higgs particle that gives mass to quarks and electrons. SMU is a member of the ATLAS Experiment.
The LHC is a program of the Geneva-based international scientific consortium known as the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. In March CERN announced that the LHC had successfully begun colliding protons at an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at any particle accelerator.
SMU LOC designers challenged by LHC’s formidable environment
SMU’s new world’s-fastest LOC serializer is what the industry calls an integrated circuit made for a specific use, or “ASIC” for application-specific integrated circuit. It was designed for the LHC’s high-radiation environment, as well as for high data bandwidth, low-power dissipation and extremely high reliability, said physicist Jingbo Ye. An associate professor of physics, Ye led development of SMU’s LOC serializer.
The SMU LOC serializer was perfected over the past three years in the SMU Research Laboratory for Optoelectronics and ASIC Development in the Department of Physics. An added feature of the SMU LOC serializer is that it can operate at cryogenic temperatures and has been tested down to liquid nitrogen temperatures of -346 degrees Fahrenheit.
It was designed to transmit data for the optical link readout system of the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter, an ATLAS sub-detector that measures the energies of electrons and photons generated at the center of ATLAS where protons collide. Because the electronic readout components are in the center of the ATLAS detector, they are essentially inaccessible for routine maintenance, so reliability is paramount, Ye said.
Serializer transmits data shower from colliding protons
With a data transmission rate of 5.8 billion-bits per second, the SMU LOC serializer represents the first milestone for the SMU-led team. The team plans to develop an even faster ASIC serializer that transmits data at up to 10 billion-bits per second. Faster circuits are critical as CERN continues increasing the LHC’s luminosity, thereby generating more and more data.
“SMU’s LOC serializer is the fastest in our field for the moment,” Ye said. “CERN is developing another fast ASIC serializer that does not yet match our speed. SMU’s next goal is to increase both the data speed and the number of data lanes to produce an even faster LOC serializer. In the next few years, we hope to increase the total speed by a factor of 62 more than what is installed in ATLAS.”
Ye presented the SMU LOC serializer design in February at CERN. Made of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor transistors in silicon-on-sapphire, the serializer’s design details also will be presented to scientists in April in Hamburg during the ATLAS Upgrade Week at the DESY laboratory, Germany’s premier research center for particle physics. The SMU LOC serializer research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The existing LOC serializer in use at present in the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter was previously developed and installed by an SMU-led team of physicists and engineers from France, Sweden, Taiwan and the United States.
Faster serializer a critical component for Super LHC
SMU’s new LOC serializer is critical for the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider, called the Super LHC, which is planned to go online in 2017, Ye said.
“The original ATLAS design used a commercial serializer that was purchased from Agilent Technologies,” Ye said. “But for the Super LHC there is no commercial device that would meet the requirements, so — being typical physicists — we set out to design it ourselves.”
The ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter’s existing optical link system, delivered by SMU physicists, has a data bandwidth of 2.4 terabits per second over 1,524 fibers, or 1.6 billion bits per second per fiber, more than 1,000 times faster than a T1 line of 1.544 megabits per second. The next generation of this optical link system will be based on the new SMU LOC serializer, and it will reach 152.4 terabits per second for the whole system.
More selectivity with faster data transfer
“Fast information transfer from the detector to the computer processing system is a necessity for handling the significantly increasing amounts of data expected in the next round of LHC experiments,” said Ryszard Stroynowski, U.S. Coordinator for the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter, and chair and professor of physics at SMU. “It will allow ATLAS to be more selective in the choices of events sent for further analysis.”
A radiation-tolerant, high-speed and low-power LOC serializer is critical for optical link systems in particle physics experiments, Ye said, noting that specialized ASIC devices are now common components of most readout systems.
“The ever increasing complexity of particle physics experiments imposes new and challenging constraints on the electronics,” Ye said. “The LOC serializer was a formidable task, but our team was up to the challenge.” — Margaret Allen
A scientific group of experimental particle physicists have reported in the latest issue of the journal Science that they cannot rule out that they may have seen a glimpse of dark matter.
Physicists have been searching for dark matter — the substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe — for decades. Jodi Cooley, an assistant professor of experimental particle physics in the SMU Physics Department, is a member of the collaboration on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment.
The experiment is located deep in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in an abandoned mine in a national park in Minnesota.
BBC News reported on the published results in a Feb. 11 article “Study hints at dark matter action” by the BBC’s science reporter Doreen Walton and published to the BBC News web site.
Cooley, quoted in the BBC article, said “Either we had a statistical fluctuation in our background or it could be that these two events are evidence of dark matter but there weren’t enough of them to be sure.”
Excerpt:
By Doreen Walton BBC News
Researchers in the U.S. say they have detected two signals which could possibly indicate the presence of particles of dark matter.
But the study in Science journal reports the statistical likelihood of a detection of dark matter as 23 percent.
Deep underground in a lab in Minnesota experiments to detect WIMPS, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles have been going on since 2003. Scientists are currently developing an even more sensitive experiment.
“It’s a very difficult situation,” said Professor Jodi Cooley from Southern Methodist University, Dallas in the U.S., who led the research. “In some ways I feel we’ve been very unlucky.
“Either we had a statistical fluctuation in our background or it could be that these two events are evidence of dark matter but there weren’t enough of them to be sure. We can’t rule them out as being a signal but we can’t conclude that they are a signal.”
Excerpt:
Astrophysical observations indicate that dark matter constitutes most of the mass in our universe, but its nature remains unknown. Over the past decade, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment has provided world-leading sensitivity for the direct detection of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter. The final exposure of our low-temperature Ge particle detectors at the Soudan Underground Laboratory yielded two candidate events, with an expected background of 0.9 – 0.2 events. This is not statistically significant evidence for a WIMP signal.
Cooley and her colleagues earlier announced the groundbreaking CDMS findings at dual press conferences on Dec. 17. The team, known as the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, hosted simultaneous talks by Cooley at the SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory in California and by Lauren Hsu of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois at Fermilab.
Scientists of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment are listening for whispers of dark matter. Inspired by his brother Erik’s research, musician Karl Ramberg built a musical model of the CDMS detector, in collaboration with CDMS scientists. Erik Ramberg and Priscilla Cushman translated real CDMS data into a format that accurately converts the energy, location and type of particles striking the CDMS detectors into sound and light. Cushman created this 5-minute video.
Fredrick Olness, a professor in SMU’s Physics Department, has been named the inaugural lecturer in a program launched by the DESY laboratory, Germany’s premier research center for particle physics.
DESY’s “Theorist of the Week” program will bring prominent theorists from around the globe to spend a week at the lab’s analysis center in Hamburg, Germany. Olness, who will visit the laboratory in March, is the program’s first guest physicist.
Fredrick Olness
The visit is hosted by DESY. The “Theorist of the Week” program is sponsored by the prestigious Helmholtz Alliance, a structured research network comprising 18 German universities and three institutes, as well as DESY.
SMU’s Olness is co-spokesman of the CTEQ collaboration, an international collaboration of 30 experimentalists and theorists from 16 universities and five national labs working on quantum chromodynamics. Known as QCD, quantum chromodynamics is the theory of the strong nuclear force that binds the protons and neutrons inside the atomic nucleus.
At DESY, Olness will present a seminar on his research specialty and also will participate in extended discussions with German experts. This program will improve the exchange between theory and experiment, provide a forum for presenting the latest research advances, and will also generate an active intellectual environment for Ph.D. students.
The Alliance is part of a broad international effort to explore the physics at the Terascale — the highest energy scales available in the laboratory, enabling scientists to study interactions at the smallest distance scales as they try to characterize the fundamental forces and building blocks of nature.
An important component of this Terascale program is the new CERN particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland, called the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. It is the highest-energy particle accelerator ever built. By accelerating protons to nearly the speed of light, the LHC functions as a “high-energy microscope” to study matter at the smallest distance scales.
“With the start-up of CERN’s LHC this past fall, we soon expect revolutionary results that will help us explain the origin of matter and decode the nature of dark matter,” Olness said. “Additionally, these results may provide glimpses of proposed extra spatial dimensions and new particles predicted by grand unified theories. Evidence for any of these phenomena would dramatically change our view of the world.”
Olness will visit DESY from March 8 to 12 and present his recent work on the “benchmark” processes that will be used to calibrate the discoveries that scientists anticipate will be made at CERN’s LHC. For example, Olness’ work on the W and Z boson production at the LHC can be used to calibrate various searches for the important Higgs boson, the hypothesized notion of super symmetry and other “new physics” processes that scientists hope to discover. Olness, with his CTEQ collaborators, will analyze a combination of data from DESY’s HERA electron-proton collider, the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois, and various fixed-target experiments to distinguish “new physics” from “old physics” and thereby maximize the discovery potential of the LHC.
Moving an ATLAS end-cap calorimeter, which measures the energy of particles produced close to the axis of the beam when protons collide. Credit: CERN
Stroynowski, Kehoe, Sekula and Ye work on the ATLAS detector, the largest of the four detectors that will study particle collisions at the LHC. Nadolsky is a leading researcher in the area of parton distribution functions, which are an essential component for making accurate predictions for LHC physics.
Olness was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2005 for significant contributions to understanding nucleon structure and heavy quark production in perturbative quantum chromodynamics. In addition to the DESY laboratory, Olness has worked at DOE’s Fermilab and at CERN’s LHC. Olness is co-author of the textbook Mathematica for Physics, which integrates new computer algebra tools into the core physics curriculum. This text is now in its 2nd Edition and also has been translated into Japanese.
At SMU, Olness received an SMU Ford Fellowship, the SMU “M” Award, and the President’s Associates Outstanding Faculty Award. He is director of the Dallas Regional Science & Engineering Fair, serves as president of the SMU Faculty Senate and brings physics to North Texas students with his “Physics Circus” public lectures to local schools.
“I particularly enjoy bringing my excitement for science discovery into the classroom with the ‘Physics Circus’ demonstration shows,” Olness said. “My love for science was fueled by my curiosity of how things work. Whether we are understanding the physics principles of a bed of nails or the substructure of the atom, curiosity is an essential ingredient for discovery.”
Physicists may see data as soon as late summer from the prototype for a $278 million science experiment in northern Minnesota that is being designed to find clues to some fundamental mysteries of the universe, including dark matter.
But it could take years before the nation’s largest “neutrino” detector answers the profound questions that matter to scientists.
Construction is underway now on a 220-ton detector that is the “integration prototype” for a much larger 14,000-ton detector. Both are part of NOvA, a cooperative project of the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago and the University of Minnesota‘s school of physics and astronomy. The project may ultimately aid understanding of matter and dark matter, how the universe formed and evolved, and current astrophysical events.
A 65-foot by 370-foot hole in the ground outlines the future NOvA detector in Minnesota. Photo: Fermilab
DOE gave “full construction start” approval Oct. 29, 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. There are 180 scientists and engineers from 28 institutions around the world collaborating on NOvA.
About 40 scientists from the international collaboration will meet Jan. 8-10 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The meeting is the first for the collaboration since DOE’s approval, said John Cooper, NOvA project manager at Fermilab.
Collaboration scientists will hear technical presentations from one another during the three-day SMU meeting, which will refine NOvA’s design, including the technical details of software, hardware and calibration, said Thomas Coan, associate professor in SMU’s Department of Physics and a scientist on the collaboration team.
The integration prototype, known as the Near Detector because it’s at Fermilab, and the larger detector, known as the Far Detector because it’s farther from Fermilab — are essentially hundreds of thousands of plastic tubes enclosing a massive amount of highly purified mineral oil. The purpose is to detect the highly significant fundamental subatomic particle called the “neutrino” and better understand its nature. NOvA, when construction is completed, will be the largest neutrino experiment in the United States.
NOvA detectors showing planes of alternating vertical and horizontal PVC modules. Photo: Fermilab
“The ‘detector prototype’ has two purposes,” said Cooper. “First it serves as an ‘integration prototype’ forcing us to find all the problems on a real device, and second it will become the ‘Near Detector’ at Fermilab.”
The integration prototype will operate on the surface at Fermilab for about a year starting in late summer 2010, Cooper said. Then in 2012 it will move 300 feet underground to become the Near Detector, he said. Construction on the Far Detector project began in June near Ash River, Minn. The detector should be fully operational by September 2013, according to Fermilab.
A hard-to-observe fundamental particle that travels alone, the neutrino has little or no mass, so rarely interacts with other particles.
Neutrinos are ubiquitous throughout our universe. They were produced during the Big Bang, and many of those are still around. New ones are constantly being created too, through natural occurrences like solar fusion in the sun’s core, or radioactive elements decaying in the Earth’s mantle, as well as when the particle accelerator at Fermilab purposely smashes protons into carbon foils.
Our sun produces so many that hundreds of billions are zinging through our bodies every second at the speed of light, Coan said. It’s hoped the new detector can resolve questions surrounding the three different kinds of neutrinos — electron, tau and muon — and their “oscillation” from one type to another as they travel, he said.
Scientists at the new detectors will analyze data from Fermilab’s neutrino beam to observe evidence of neutrinos when the speedy, lightweight particles occasionally smash into the carbon nuclei in the scintillating oil of the detector, causing a burst of light flashes, Coan said.
NOvA is looking for the most elusive oscillation of the muon type of neutrino to the electron type, Cooper said. — Margaret Allen
