Interdisciplinary Collaboration/ /International Collaboration
The Hampton University QuarkNet Center 2000 is the center in Hampton Roads, Virginia, for QuarkNet, an NSF- and DOE-funded program to bring physics teachers and their students into particle physics research. This page will describe the research we are doing, the opportunity for physics teachers, and the QuarkNet program as we will implement it here at Hampton University.
The projects below are contributions that Hampton Roads teachers participating in QuarkNet are making to the
ATLAS detector construction effort. This is a worldwide collaboration to build "A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS",
the largest, most sensitive particle detector yet. The ATLAS detector will be at one of the two proton beam
intersection points of the Large Hadron Collider being built at CERN, the European Laboratory for Nuclear
Research. The LHC, due to go online in 2005, will be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. The
Hampton University Particle Physics Group has the assignment of working on the construction Transition
Radiation Tracker modules, or "straws", for the Inner Detector portion of ATLAS.
Mentor: O. K. Baker
Hampton University is responsible for testing of assembled ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) modules. The modules are approximately 1.5m x 0.2m x 0.2m. There will be approximately 111 of these to be tested. It will be useful to test these with cosmic rays to verify tracking performance. It is proposed that the Lead Teachers assist in setting up the scintillation-counter trigger system, the DAQ system, and help with the analysis software. A comparison of the performance of the trigger system with a simulation will be part of the project. This will include counter efficiency as a function of position, timing studies, etc. The trigger rates and tracking information would be available in real time.
Mentor: K.W. McFarlane
The TRT modules will be surveyed with X-rays at Hampton. These surveys will provide gain measurements along the straws as well as wire position measurements, to a precision of about 0.05 mm. Again, there will be 111 modules to survey, with many spectra to be gathered and analysed for each module. The Lead Teachers would help operate the system, review and analyse data, set up databases, do experiments on effects of variations in test conditions, and create reports in the database system being used. Again,each module will be under test for about a week, and the data being gathered can be made available on the web. Note that radiation will not be an issue -- the test stand will be shielded so that radiation exposures are at acceptable levels.