Research and Development in Micromegas Detector for the ATLAS Upgrade

My candidacy as a Ph.D student begun officially on September 2010. It was at the time that the MAMMA collaboration performed R&D on micromegas detectors transforming them spark resistant. This was done by adding a foil of resistive strips on top of the readout strips. Joining the collaboration I started to be active in the test beam periods dedicating time to understand the detector behaviour. In parallel I developed simulation procedures to understand further the detector and finally describe the physical processes taking place when a charged particle traverses the detector. Moreover, the unexplored at that time μTPC method was studied. In late 2011 the micromegas technology was a candidate for the ATLAS New Small Wheel (NSW) upgrade to which I dedicated most of my time in order satisfy the requirements and prove that the detector will work in the ATLAS environment including the magnetic field conditions. Most of the work at that time was dedicated to understand the spatial resolution of the detector and its trigger capabilities through the test beam data and by means of simulation. In 2012-2013 most of the time was dedicated to study the behaviour of the VMM ASIC along with the resistive micromegas detectors. For this a data acquisition and control application was developed allowing the data recording and the study of the conditions under which the ASIC should be operated. After gaining experience through a long calibration of the ASIC, the micromegas performance with the μTPC method was studied. In parallel more studies were done to satisfy the ATLAS requirements for the NSW upgrade. This includes the contribution to the Technical Design Report micromegas and electronics chapters and the simulation and layout developments within the ATLAS software framework. The upgrade project was finally approved in the summer of 2013. The rest of my time was denoted to study the detector layout for the NSW upgrade with the stereo strip layout. Moreover I actively took part in the electronics design for the frontend and backend electronics of the NSW detectors. I was also part of several task force to study the micromegas performance. In parallel to the above described work I developed the Detector Control System for the Cathode Strip Chambers (CSC) as well as the front-end electronics monitoring for the Monitored Drift Tubes (MDT) of the ATLAS muon spectrometer. A substantial part of my time was denoted not only to the development but on the efficient operation of the CSC and MDT detectors during the ATLAS data taking as CSC DCS coordinator and DCS expert for both systems.