Development of the detector control system for the ATLAS Level-1 trigger and measurement of the single top production cross section

This thesis discusses the development of the Detector Control System (DCS) for the ATLAS Level-1 Trigger. Microcontroller code has been developed to read out slow controls data from the Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger modules into the wider DCS. Back-end software has been developed for archiving this data. A Finite State Machine (FSM) has also been developed to offer remote access to the L1 Trigger hardware from the ATLAS Control Room. This Thesis also discusses the discovery potential for electroweak single top production during early running. Using Monte Carlo data some of the major systematics are discussed. A potential upper limit on the production cross section is calculated to be 45.2 pb. If the Standard Model prediction is assumed, a measured signal could potentially have a significance of up to 2.23¾ using 200 pb−1 of data.