Feasibility of the Hardware Muon Trigger Track Finder Processor in CMS

This paper describes a feasibility study for the design of the Muon Trigger Track Finder Processor in the high-energy physics experiment CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid, planned for 2005) at CERN. It covers the specification, proposed method, and a prototype implementation. Comparison between several other measurement methods and the proposed one are carried out. The task of the processor is to identify muons and measure their transverse momenta and locations within 350 ns. It uses data from almost two hundred thousand detector cells of drift tube muon chambers. The processor searches for muon tracks originating from the interaction point by joining the track segments provided by the drift tube muon chamber electronics to full tracks. It assigns transverse momentum to each reconstructed track using the track's bend angle.