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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

In-pixel integration of signal processing and AI/ML based data filtering for particle tracking detectors

We present the first physical realization of in-pixel signal processing with integrated AI-based data filtering for particle tracking detectors. Building on prior work that demonstrated a physics-motivated edge-AI algorithm suitable for ASIC implementation, this work marks a significant milestone toward intelligent silicon trackers. Our prototype readout chip performs real-time data reduction at the sensor level while meeting stringent requirements on power, area, and latency. The chip is taped-out in 28nm TSMC CMOS bulk process, which has been shown to have sufficient radiation hardness for particle experiments. This development represents a key step toward enabling fully on-detector edge AI, with broad implications for data throughput and discovery potential in high-rate, high-radiation environments such as the High-Luminosity LHC.

Parpillon, Benjamin [Fermilab; Illinois U., Chicag↗
DOE OSTI2025

Gain characterization of LGAD sensors with beta particles and 28-MeV protons

Low Gain Avalanche Diodes, also known as LGADs, are widely considered for fast-timing applications in high energy physics, nuclear physics, space science, medical imaging, and precision measurements of rare processes. Such devices are silicon-based and feature an intrinsic gain due to a p + -doped layer that allows the production of a controlled avalanche of carriers, with multiplication on the order of 10–100. This technology can provide time resolution on the order of 20–30 ps, and variants of this technology can provide precision tracking too. The characterization of LGAD performance has so far primarily been focused on the interaction of minimum ionizing particles for high energy and nuclear physics applications. This article expands the study of LGAD performance to highly-ionizing particles, such as 28-MeV protons, which are relevant for several future scientific applications, e.g. in biology and medical physics, among others. These studies were performed with a beam of 28-MeV protons from a tandem Van de Graaff accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory and beta particles from a ^90Sr source; these were used to characterize the response and the gain of an LGAD as a function of bias voltage and collected charge. Here, the experimental results are also compared to TCAD simulations.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Operation and performance of the CMS silicon strip tracker with proton-proton collisions at the CERN LHC

Salient aspects of the commissioning, calibration, and performance of the CMS silicon strip tracker are discussed, drawing on experience during operation with proton-proton collisions delivered by the CERN LHC. The data were obtained with a variety of luminosities. The operating temperature of the strip tracker was changed several times during this period and results are shown as a function of temperature in several cases. Details of the system performance are presented, including occupancy, signal-to-noise ratio, Lorentz angle, and single-hit spatial resolution. Saturation effects in the APV25 readout chip preamplifier observed during early Run 2 are presented, showing the effect on various observables and the subsequent remedy. Studies of radiation effects on the strip tracker are presented both for the optical readout links and the silicon sensors. The observed effects are compared to simulation, where available, and they generally agree well with expectations.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Novel indium phosphide charged particle detector characterization with a 120 GeV proton beam

Thin film detectors which incorporate semiconductor materials other than silicon have the potential to build upon their unique material properties and offer advantages such as faster response times, operation at room temperature, and radiation hardness. To explore the possibility, promising candidate materials were selected, and particle tracking detectors were fabricated. An indium phosphide detector with a metal-intrinsic-metal structure has been fabricated for particle tracking. The detector was tested using radioactive sources and a high energy proton beam at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. In addition to its simplistic design and fabrication process, the indium phosphide particle detector showed a very fast response time of hundreds of picoseconds for the 120 GeV protons, which are comparable to the ultra-fast silicon detectors. This fast-timing response is attributed to the high electron mobility of indium phosphide. Such material properties can be leveraged to build novel detectors with superlative performance.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Expected tracking performance of the ATLAS Inner Tracker at the High-Luminosity LHC

The high-luminosity phase of LHC operations (HL-LHC), will feature a large increase in simultaneous proton-proton interactions per bunch crossing up to 200, compared with a typical leveling target of 64 in Run 3. Such an increase will create a very challenging environment in which to perform charged particle trajectory reconstruction, a task crucial for the success of the ATLAS physics program, and will exceed the capabilities of the current ATLAS Inner Detector (ID). A new all-silicon Inner Tracker (ITk) will replace the current ID in time for the start of the HL-LHC. To ensure successful use of the ITk capabilities in Run 4 and beyond, the ATLAS tracking software has been successfully adapted to achieve state-of-the-art track reconstruction in challenging high-luminosity conditions with the ITk detector. This paper presents the expected tracking performance of the ATLAS ITk based on the latest available developments since the ITk technical design reports.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Reconstruction of neutrino events in the Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment. Part I

The Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) was designed to reconstruct neutrino events from the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) with the parallel goals of measuring neutron production in interactions with oxygen and serving as a testbed for new technology. The ANNIE detector consists of a 26-ton water Cherenkov target tank instrumented with conventional photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), a downstream tracking muon spectrometer, and an upstream double wall of plastic scintillator to serve to veto charged particles incoming from neutrino events that occur upstream of the experimental setup. ANNIE has also deployed multiple Large-Area Picosecond PhotoDetectors (LAPPDs) and a test vessel of water-based liquid scintillator (WbLS). This paper describes the event reconstruction performance of the detector before implementation of these novel technologies, which will serve as a baseline against which their impact can be measured. That said, even the techniques used for event reconstruction using only the conventional PMT array and muon spectrometer are significantly different than those used in other water Cherenkov detectors due to the small size of ANNIE (which makes nanosecond-scale timing not as useful as in a large detector) and the availability of reconstruction information from the tracking muon spectrometer. We demonstrate that combining the information from these two elements into a single fit using only pattern recognition yields a muon vertex uncertainty of 60 cm, a directional uncertainty of 13.2 degrees, and energy reconstruction uncertainty of about 10% for BNB muon neutrino Charged Current Zero Pion (CC0π) events.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2026

On-chip probabilistic inference for charged-particle tracking at the sensor edge

Modern scientific instruments operate under increasingly extreme constraints on bandwidth, latency, and power. Inference at the sensor edge determines experimental data collection efficiency by deciding which information to save for further analysis. Particle tracking detectors at the Large Hadron Collider exemplify this challenge: pixelated silicon sensors generate rich spatiotemporal ionization patterns, yet most of this information is discarded due to data-rate limitations. Concurrently, advancements in co-design tools provide rapid turn-around for incorporating machine learning into application-specific integrated circuits, motivating designs for particle detectors with new integrated technologies. We demonstrate that neural networks embedded in the front-end electronics can infer charged-particle kinematic parameters from a single silicon layer. We regress hit positions and incident angles with calibrated uncertainties, while satisfying stringent constraints on numerical precision, latency, and silicon area. Our results establish a path toward probabilistic inference directly at the edge, opening new opportunities for intelligent sensing in high-rate scientific instruments.

Das, Arghya Ranjan [Purdue U.] (ORCID:000000018451↗
DOE OSTI2024

ML-based calibration and control of the GlueX Central Drift Chamber

The GlueX Central Drift Chamber (CDC) in Hall D at Jefferson Lab, used for detecting and tracking charged particles, is calibrated and controlled during data taking using a Gaussian process. The system dynamically adjusts the high voltage applied to the anode wires inside the chamber in response to changing environmental and experimental conditions such that the gain is stabilized. Control policies have been established to manage the CDC's behavior. These policies are activated when the model's uncertainty exceeds a configurable threshold or during human-initiated tests during normal production running. Finally, we demonstrate the system reduces the time detector experts dedicate to calibration of the data offline, leading to a marked decrease in computing resource usage without compromising detector performance.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2026

The sweeper spectrometer for neutron invariant-mass spectroscopy at FRIB

Neutron invariant-mass spectroscopy (NIMS) is a key technique for studying unbound and weakly bound nuclei at the limits of stability. At the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), such measurements are performed using the Sweeper spectrometer, a large-gap, high-rigidity dipole system coupled to the MoNA-LISA neutron detector arrays. To meet the demands imposed by higher beam energies (>130 MeV/u) and the broad cocktail-beam selection available at FRIB, the spectrometer has recently been upgraded to improve particle-identification and detection performance. Upstream of the reaction target, a plastic scintillator with Silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) readout provides the global trigger and time reference, two parallel plate avalanche counters (PPACs) track the trajectories of incoming beam particles, and a silicon PIN detector measures the energy loss, ΔE, for charge (Z) identification. After the Sweeper magnet, the trajectories of the reaction products are tracked by two micro-pattern drift chambers (MPDCs), their charge (Z) is identified by a Frisch-grid ionization chamber (FG-IC), and their mass-to-charge ratio (A/Q) is deduced by time-of-flight measurement using a fast plastic scintillator read out by an array of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). The detection system also incorporates the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) for neutron detection and the CAESium-iodide scintillator ARray (CAESAR) for high-efficiency γ-ray measurements to enable full kinematic reconstruction. Performance was evaluated using a cocktail beam around 37 Al accelerated at E ≈ 130 MeV/u during the first FRIB campaign, demonstrating the readiness of the upgraded system for future studies of nuclei at and beyond the neutron drip line.

Particle identification methods↗
DOE OSTI2026

Muon tracking in a LiquidO opaque scintillator detector

LiquidO is an innovative radiation detector concept. The core idea is to exploit stochastic light confinement in a highly scattering medium to self-segment the detector volume. In this paper, we demonstrate event-by-event muon tracking in a LiquidO opaque scintillator detector prototype. The detector consists of a 30 mm cubic scintillator volume instrumented with 64 wavelength-shifting fibres arranged in an 8 × 8 grid with a 3.2 mm pitch and read out by silicon photomultipliers. A wax-based opaque scintillator with a scattering length of approximately 0.5 mm is used. The tracking performance of this LiquidO detector is characterised with cosmic-ray muons and the position resolution is demonstrated to be 450 μm per row of fibres. These results highlight the potential of LiquidO opaque scintillator detectors to achieve fine spatial resolution, enabling precise particle tracking and imaging.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Technical design report for the CODEX- β demonstrator

The CODEX-β apparatus is a demonstrator for the proposed future CODEX-b experiment, a long-lived-particle detector foreseen for operation at IP8 during HL-LHC data-taking. The demonstrator project, intended to collect data in 2025, is described, with a particular focus on the design, construction, and installation of the new apparatus.

Dark Matter detectors (WIMPs, axions, etc.)↗
DOE OSTI2024

Beam test performance studies of CMS Phase-2 Outer Tracker module prototypes

A new tracking detector will be installed as part of thePhase-2 upgrade of the CMS detector for the high-luminosity LHC era.This tracking detector includes the Inner Tracker, equipped withsilicon pixel sensor modules, and the Outer Tracker, consisting ofmodules with two parallel stacked silicon sensors. The Outer Trackerfront-end ASICs will be able to correlate hits from chargedparticles in these two sensors to perform on-module discriminationof transverse momenta (p$_{T}$). The p$_{T}$information is generated at a frequency of 40 MHz and will be usedin the Level-1 trigger decision of CMS. Prototypes of theso-called 2S modules were tested at the Test Beam Facility at DESYHamburg between 2019 and 2020. These modules use the finalfront-end ASIC, the CMS Binary Chip (CBC), and for the firsttime the Concentrator Integrated Circuit (CIC), optical readoutand on-module power conversion. In total, seven modules were tested,one of which was assembled with sensors irradiated with protons. Animportant aspect was to show that it is possible to read out modulessynchronously. A cluster hit efficiency of about 99.75 % wasachieved for all modules. The CBC p$_{T}$ discriminationmechanism has been verified to work together with the CIC andoptical readout. The measured module performance meets therequirements for operation in the upgraded CMS tracking detector.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2024

Development of the CMS detector for the CERN LHC Run 3

Since the initial data taking of the CERN LHC, the CMSexperiment has undergone substantial upgrades and improvements. Thispaper discusses the CMS detector as it is configured for the thirddata-taking period of the CERN LHC, Run 3, which started in2022. The entire silicon pixel tracking detector was replaced. A newpowering system for the superconducting solenoid was installed. Theelectronics of the hadron calorimeter was upgraded. All the muonelectronic systems were upgraded, and new muon detector stationswere added, including a gas electron multiplier detector. Theprecision proton spectrometer was upgraded. The dedicated luminositydetectors and the beam loss monitor were refurbished. Substantialimprovements to the trigger, data acquisition, software, andcomputing systems were also implemented, including a new hybridCPU/GPU farm for the high-level trigger.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2026

Event Reconstruction for Water-based Liquid Scintillator Detectors

Water Cherenkov and liquid scintillator detectors represent two complementary approaches in neutrino physics. Water Cherenkov detectors provide particle track direction and particle identification (PID) through Cherenkov ring topology, while liquid scintillator detectors offer higher light yield and lower energy thresholds. Water-based liquid scintillator (WbLS) is designed to combine the advantages of both technologies. However, the simultaneous detection of Cherenkov and scintillation light by photosensors introduces significant challenges for event reconstruction. This poster presents event reconstruction studies for WbLS detectors. A likelihood-based reconstruction framework, fiTQun, has been successfully used in Super-Kamiokande to reconstruct water Cherenkov events in cylindrical detectors. We extend and improve this framework to demonstrate event reconstruction in WbLS detectors, enabling the concurrent reconstruction of particle energy, PID, vertex, and direction. The results demonstrate competitive performance in energy resolution, PID separation, and vertex and direction reconstruction, highlighting the strong potential of WbLS for next-generation neutrino experiments.

Xie, Zhenxiong [Minnesota U.] (ORCID:0009000301442↗
DOE OSTI2024

The ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider: a description of the detector configuration for Run 3

The ATLAS detector is installed in its experimental cavern at Point 1 of the CERN Large Hadron Collider. During Run 2 of the LHC, a luminosity of ℒ = 2 × 10 34 cm -2 s -1 was routinely achieved at the start of fills, twice the design luminosity. For Run 3, accelerator improvements, notably luminosity levelling, allow sustained running at an instantaneous luminosity of ℒ = 2 × 10 34 cm -2 s -1 , with an average of up to 60 interactions per bunch crossing. The ATLAS detector has been upgraded to recover Run 1 single-lepton trigger thresholds while operating comfortably under Run 3 sustained pileup conditions. A fourth pixel layer 3.3 cm from the beam axis was added before Run 2 to improve vertex reconstruction and b-tagging performance. New Liquid Argon Calorimeter digital trigger electronics, with corresponding upgrades to the Trigger and Data Acquisition system, take advantage of a factor of 10 finer granularity to improve triggering on electrons, photons, taus, and hadronic signatures through increased pileup rejection. The inner muon endcap wheels were replaced by New Small Wheels with Micromegas and small-strip Thin Gap Chamber detectors, providing both precision tracking and Level-1 Muon trigger functionality. Trigger coverage of the inner barrel muon layer near one endcap region was augmented with modules integrating new thin-gap resistive plate chambers and smaller-diameter drift-tube chambers. Tile Calorimeter scintillation counters were added to improve electron energy resolution and background rejection. Upgrades to Minimum Bias Trigger Scintillators and Forward Detectors improve luminosity monitoring and enable total proton-proton cross section, diffractive physics, and heavy ion measurements. These upgrades are all compatible with operation in the much harsher environment anticipated after the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC and are the first steps towards preparing ATLAS for the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC. This paper describes the Run 3 configuration of the ATLAS detector.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Commissioning of an MPGD-based Drift Chamber for Heavy-ion Tracking in FRIB's Sweeper magnet system

A newly developed drift chamber equipped with an innovative hybrid Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detector based readout was commissioned at FRIB. The detector consists of a Multi-layer Thick Gas Electron Multiplier (M-THGEM) mounted over a high-granularity, position-sensitive readout board. Denoted as the Micro-Pattern Drift Chamber (MPDC), the new device is used to provide tracking capability as part of the detectors of the Sweeper magnet system for neutron-invariant-mass spectrometry at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB). The localization of impinging ions in a 30 × 30 cm 2 drift area is derived by processing the charge-avalanche distribution induced on the segmented readout board. The signals induced on the readout pads are processed by a compact, multi-channel Data Acquisition System (DAQ) based on the Scalable Readout System (SRS). To facilitate synchronization with other detector systems of the Sweeper magnet system, the SRS has been configured to accept an external trigger.

Gaseous detectors↗
DOE OSTI2024

Sensor response and radiation damage effects for 3D pixels in the ATLAS IBL Detector

Pixel sensors in 3D technology equip the outer ends of the staves of the Insertable B Layer (IBL), the innermost layer of the ATLAS Pixel Detector, which was installed before the start of LHC Run 2 in 2015. 3D pixel sensors are expected to exhibit more tolerance to radiation damage and are the technology of choice for the innermost layer in the ATLAS tracker upgrade for the HL-LHC programme. While the LHC has delivered an integrated luminosity of ≃ 235 fb -1 since the start of Run 2, the 3D sensors have received a non-ionising energy deposition corresponding to a fluence of ≃ 8.5 × 10 14 1 MeV neutron-equivalent cm -2 averaged over the sensor area. This paper presents results of measurements of the 3D pixel sensors' response during Run 2 and the first two years of Run 3, with predictions of its evolution until the end of Run 3 in 2025. Data are compared with radiation damage simulations, based on detailed maps of the electric field in the Si substrate, at various fluence levels and bias voltage values. These results illustrate the potential of 3D technology for pixel applications in high-radiation

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗