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01.01.2011 Passage of baton at the Tracker Management
At the turn of the year, the Tracker management baton passed from GianMario Bilei (picture, at right) to Karl Aaron Gill (picture, at left), who will be the Tracker Project Manager for 2011-2012. GianMario's two-year term started on January 1st, 2009. Stepping down from the top responsibilty in the subdetector project, GianMario noted as the end of his term coincides with the end of a very successful year, full of excitement for CMS and the Tracker.
A historical year indeed, the first full year of data taking after so many years of hard preparation work. In this year CMS has collected and published beautiful first Physics results and this of course is only the beginning: the best has yet to come.
In a End-of-Year (and End-of-Term) Message GianMario expressed deep and heartfelt thanks and congratulations to all Tracker collaborators and in particular to those who have operated the CMS Tracker with tireless dedication and passion, allowing to achieve the subdetector's amazing performance.
Everybody's hope now is that under Karl's term, CMS
will break the land of new discoveries.
The new Tracker Project Manager, Karl Aaron Gill (left) and the past one, GianMario Bilei (right).
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06.12.2010 CMS Awards to Tracker colleagues
The 2010 CMS Achievement Awards were given during the opening session of the December CMS Week, on December 6, 2010. Two out of the 14 awardees are Tracker members, whom we warmly congratulate:
- Gordon Kaussen, for outstanding contributions to the calibration of the Strip Tracker
- Joshua Thompson, for outstanding contributions to the operations of the Pixel Tracker
The awardees in the Main Auditorium, award certificate in hand,
together with Guido Tonelli (CMS Spokesperson, 3rd from left), Dan Green (Chairman of the Collaboration Board, 7th from left). Gordon Kaussen is 3rd from right, Joshua Thompson is 4th from right.
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28.05.2010 Tracker Week in Elba Island
The Tracker held its first "Week" outside CERN. The meeting took place in Hotel Hermitage,
a nice seaside resort in the small village of La Biodola on the Elba Island (Italy), from 23 to 28 of May 2010.
It was a full-immersion 5-day workshop. The secluded venue favoured great attendance for good information sharing
among Tracker collaborators, while leaving sufficient time for people to discuss and solve issues in a relaxed atmosphere.
One day and a half were dedicated to reviewing the current Tracker operation, performance and contribution to Physics results.
Two days were devoted to Tracker upgrade plans and activities. The rest of the time was available for discussions and socializing.
See also the meeting agenda.
Thanks to Ettore Focardi for an excellent organization and to the INFN-Pisa administrative staff for the user support.
The Tracker week participants framed against the Tyrrhenian Sea
(Photo by Kimberly Strom)
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30.03.2010 The first 7 TeV LHC collisions and the CMS Tracker
On March 30th at 12.58 LHC delivered to CMS for the first time 7 TeV Ecm collisions.
CMS and the Tracker were fully operational and collected about 210.000 Minimum Bias events in ~ 2 hours during the first fill.
Everything worked very well, the quality of the data and the performance of the Tracker were excellent, the feedback from
the offline was ultra-rapid. The start-up of data taking at 7 TeV Ecm looks thus very good, but this is going to be a long journey!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone and the teams that have worked very hard
over the last few months of shutdown to improve and consolidate the Tracker, its systems and infrastructures.
Gian Mario Bilei (Tracker Project Manager)
A beautiful example of 7 TeV Ecm pp
collision event seen in CMS, from the very first minutes this regime was established
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15.03.2010 CMS Awards to Tracker colleagues
As the LHC has delivered the first collisions and the first CMS physics paper with collision data is published,
in a memorable ceremony Awards for Outstanding Achievements in the Construction of the CMS detector were given to 100 collaborators.
21 of these awards (table) were given to people who made outstanding contributions to the construction of the Tracker.
Congratulations to these colleagues, and also thanks, as without their professional work and dedicated commitment,
the Tracker could not be the superb detector that it has shown to be as soon as LHC has come to life!
The awardees in the Main Auditorium, award certificate in hand,
together with Guido Tonelli (CMS Spokesperson), Dan Green (Chairman of the Collaboration Board)
and Gian Mario Bilei (Tracker Project Manager)
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06.12.09 An exciting first day of LHC clean collisions for the Tracker!
Today LHC delivered to CMS a total of about 5 hours of clean collisions and
we have recorded about 11000 min bias BSC triggers.
The quality of the data produced and the performance of the Tracker together with the exceptional
speed with which we have analyzed Tracker data and provided feedback were simply very, very impressive.
I would like to thank and congratulate with all who have tirelessly and entusiastically worked
at P5 and CMS centers to make this happen. This is only the beginning of long and hopefully
exciting story.(Gian Mario Bilei, Tracker Project Manager)
Display of a candidate K-short reconstructed vertex. The V0 candidate is in red, the tracks in green,
the hits associated to tracks in yellow, and the primary vertex in blue. (Run 123596, Event 12886346):
Display of a very clean candidate di-jet event with both Tracker and Calorimeter info.
(Run 123596, Event 6732761):
Display of one of the first collisions observed with the full Tracker
(Run 123592, Event 1713018):
A nice event with Pixel hits on track (Run 123592, Event 548344):
Enjoy a lot more at these links:
http://malgeril.web.cern.ch/malgeril/evdisp900gev/
http://www.fynu.ucl.ac.be/users/l.quertenmont/CMS_Collision/Run123592/
http://www.fynu.ucl.ac.be/users/l.quertenmont/CMS_Collision/Run123596/
And here is a first vizualization of independent track jets and calo jets (both pT>2GeV) in the
nicest event from run 123592:
http://cern.ch/lowette/trackjets_123592_392793.png
Tracks shown were cut at pT>1GeV, dz(tr,PV)<1cm, nhits>8.
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30.11.09 Full Tracker on for the first time with Beam
This morning between 8:20 and 8:50 for the first time the full Tracker (Strips and Pixel) was turned ON
and successfully collected data in Global run with a quiet single beam running in LHC.
This is a major achievement. Everything seems all right including occupancies. DPG studies are on the way.
Collisions at 900 GeV are expected this Wed.
Many thanks to all involved. (Gian Mario Bilei, Tracker Project Manager)
Below is a display of a clear beam-gas collision observed with the full Tracker
(Run 123065, Event 667025)
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23.11.09 First LHC Beam1-Beam2 Collision events seen in the Tracker
Only TOB was turned ON today after LHC Opearation declared stable beams for a while. Below is a 900 GeV p-p collision event seen
by the TOB in Run 122314, Evt 8605569.
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23.11.09 First Tracks with the real LHC beams
TOB was turned ON today after LHC Opearation declared stable beams for a while. Here are images showings possible tracks from
inelastic collisions detected by TOB in run 122294, lumi section 37...
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31.10.09 Resuming Cosmic runs with the Tracker
After further maintenance work on the detector here are 4 new cosmic events from run 119013...
... and a few event display animations (make sure your Browser settings allow image animations and click on each image to animate them!).
(thanks to Loic Quertenmont).
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16.07.09 Tracker yields data again!
After the refurbishment of the Cooling plants (see next article) and 5 weeks of intense re-commissioning work,
last night the Tracker joined the MW Global Run at zero tesla. Here are 4 cosmic muon events.
A few modules appear a bit noisy still, so we have some more work to do, but our detector is operational again!
Here you can enjoy a full
slide show
of events (thanks to Loic Quertenmont).
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01.07.09 Tracker back into operation
A series of important milestones have been passed during the last 3 months. With the delivery of refurbished cooling systems, pixels
and strip systems have been brought back into operation after long shutdowns. Pixels has been operating since reinsertion of FPIX in April,
and has been running at 4?C since May 16 when the bulkhead thermal screen was commissioned. More recently, on June 10 the Strip
Tracker was powered up in its entirety, with cooling fluid circulating at 4?C, allowing commissioning of the Strip Tracker to proceed
at full speed.
The newly refurbished Tracker Cooling Plants
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A toast after successful completion of the refurbishment work
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The full Tracker is well on course to be ready for CRAFT, with Strip Tracker readout operation in ?peak? mode remaining
also on track to be ready
for beam operations in the Autumn in ?deconvolution? readout mode. ...
(read full story)
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04.05.09 CMS forward pixels: better than ever
In July of last year we successfully inserted the pixel detector inside CMS and successfully integrated and operated it with the rest of the CMS detector during the CRAFT run.
Forward pixel detector during the repair work:
(a) the old cooling tubes; (b) the new cooling tubes; (c) a pyrolytic graphite ?cold finger? applied
to an Analog Opto-Hybrid; (d) FPix detector back in CMS
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Despite the excellent detector performance some problems arose after installation and caused the loss of about 6% of the forward pixel (FPix) detector channels: a short circuit developed on a low voltage digital line about ten days after the CMS close-out and another short developed on a high voltage line a month later.
The obvious thing to do was to take advantage of the long shutdown to remove the short circuits. At the same time we made some specific interventions to improve the robustness and stability of the FPix detector against the coolant pressure and temperature fluctuations.
The repair work has now been successfully completed. The reason for the shorts has been fully understood and all possible measures have been adopted to avoid this problem happening again. The internal silicone tubes for the coolant have been replaced with more robust ones, which can withstand a pressure up to 10 bars (the old ones were rated to 1.7 bars only). Pyrolytic graphite ?cold fingers?, connected to the copper cooling pipes running along the services, have also been applied to the Analog Opto-Hybrid circuits, stabilizing their temperature by making them less sensitive to the environmental temperature fluctuations.
The five-week time window available to perform the repair work was pretty tight but with a good level of organization and knowledgeable people involved in the effort we managed to stay within the assigned period of time. We fully recovered the channels lost because of the shorts and even made the system more robust. The FPix detector is now back in CMS with only ~0.6% of readout chips broken: one bad chip, corresponding to 0.02%, is completely unrecoverable and a set of 24 chips, corresponding to the remaining 0.56%, has temperature dependent performance.
This experience reinforced our belief that every problem has a solution. We are now ready to recalibrate the detector at the final running temperature and, as soon as the LHC turns on again, to explore the unknown world that awaits.
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20.04.09 Forward Pixels Detectors reinstalled
The last two weeks the Forward Pixels (FPIX) detectors were both reinstalled and successfully tested.
This activity was very much interleaved with the re-alignment of the central beam pipe. Both activities
took place in a fragile and confined environment where each movement counts and where efficient communication
between the various teams involved is essential.
Forward Pixels reinstalled and successfully tested
(from left to right: Pasquale D'Angelo, Lorenzo Uplegger, Mauro Dinardo)
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Once the FPIX commissioning and the central beam pipe alignment completed, both Beam Condition Monitors (BCMs) were reinstalled in just two days. The crew responsible for this activity was delighted to see that despite the huge amount of activities performed around their detectors services no damaged had to be repaired.
Once the BCMs were in place, the PIX volume had to be sealed. This activity was critical to allow the efficient inertion of the PIX detectors. Ending the sequence, there came the reinstallation of the alignment ring. The subsequent survey operations are due to be complete by Tuesday April 21st. The next step will be to remove the various platforms and supporting structures that were put together to allow installing the Preshower (ES) detectors and upgrading the FPIX detectors. This heavy logistics activity will be closely monitored by the CMS mechanics team and should apply the experience acquired during the installation in February. It will remain a delicate operation during which coordination between the various actors has to be very tight.
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01.01.09 Salvatore
Costa is the new Web Editor of this page.
01.01.09 Gian Mario Bilei is the new Tracker Project Manager.
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19.10.08
Loic
Quertenmont has produced a lot of very
nice pictures of events in the 3.8T field.
Enjoy the
slideshow too...
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16.10.08 Cosmic
tracks in 2.4T magnetic field.
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3.09.08 Commissioning
progress. Recent images of tracks, both firsts.
A cosmic ray observed by both strip and pixels
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A cosmic muon crossing CMS in the 3T field.
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9.07.08 Over
1 million cosmic ray events taken last night!
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8.07.08 Triggered
cosmic ray tracks.
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3.7.08 First triggered cosmic ray tracks seen in the Tracker during commissioning,
from Christoph Delaere.
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14.2.08 March
CERN Courier has
a centre spread article on the Tracker with a cover picture.
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