Precision Mechanical Detector Assemblies for Particle Physics

According to the Standard Model of particle physics, the universe is made up from a small number of elementary particles, governed by a few fundamental forces. To study the physics of elementary particles the conditions which governed the universe at its beginning are reproduced in collider experiments: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN started to collect data in 2010, a particle accelerator which probes deeper into the processes of the Big Bang than ever before.

It will ultimately collide beams of protons at an energy of 14 TeV, which corresponds to an infant universe of only a fraction of a second in age.

Large detectors with several different components will detect the decay products emerging from the colliding beams. The ensemble of information from all detector elements is used to reconstruct what happened in the collision. The upgrade of LHC to the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) and future projected collider like the Future Circular Collider will boost the sensitivity by intensifying the colliding beams.

This also poses new challenges to the detector elements to withstand the increased radiation levels.

The proposed project will upgrade our metrology capabilities to expand our capabilities to build greater precision and larger-area detector devices. This will enable us the implement the quality control and quality assurance needed to produce precision mechanical detector assemblies for the next generation of particle tracking detectors, that will be used in the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider and beyond at CERN.