Beam, background and luminosity monitoring in LHCb and upgrade of the LHCb fast readout control

The work described in this thesis was developed, implemented and completely put in operations during the first year of physics data taking at the LHC. It is shown here that it is aimed at studying beam and background characteristics, monitor the global timing of the experiment, monitor online the luminosity at LHCb and monitor most the experimental conditions which can affect the LHCb physics data quality. The many functionalities of the presented systems are outlined in great detail and some selected topics of analysis are presented in order to validate the good performance. The various systems in fact showed high reliability, completeness and robustness and hence it heavily contributed to the global efficiency of the LHCb experiment and also contributed directly to the commissioning and running of the LHC machine for first physics runs. Some important concepts are also brought to attention in this thesis as possible solutions to be taken into account at the LHC. A scintillator system for beam, background and online luminosity monitoring system at LHC is described. The concept, even if not new, of monitoring beam and background characteristics and evaluating the luminosity with a scintillator based system proved to be extremely powerful, thanks to its flexiblity and simplicity. The concept in fact was also taken in consideration by the ALICE experiment, the ATLAS experiment and the LHC machine which are installing similar systems to the one in LHCb. Another important concept which is presented here is the importance of a centralized system for timing, trigger and readout control. The global timing of the LHCb experiment is centrally managed as well as the readout control. Moreover, having access to all possible experimental conditions from the LHCb experiment and the LHC machine allows for an extreme level of interconnectivity. This would allow also for possible correlation between different systems of an experiment and between different experiments with the LHC machine. It is also shown that in order to achieve these functionalities a very complex software framework was developed. The development of dedicated software tools is also essential in order to analyse, produce summaries for offline and post-mortem analysis. This online framework will become even more important during the 2011/2012 physics data taking as the LHCb experiment running conditions will strongly depend on the beam and machine settings. The final aim is to reach a steady running performance, maximizing the recorded luminosity and the quality of data. Finally, the concept of a centralized timing, trigger and readout control is also considered in the proposal of an upgraded readout control system for the upgrade of the LHCb experiment. In this thesis, the proposal for such an upgraded system is presented, with the functionalities, implementations and technologies involved. In this context, the use of FPGA also allows having extreme flexibility and high readout speed complying with the extreme specifications of an upgraded LHCb detector within the upgrade of the LHC accelerator.