Level 1 trigger developments for the upgrade of the CMS detector for the High Luminosity LHC [HL-LHC]

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will be the world's highest energy particle accelerator for the foreseeable future, and the only facility capable of investigating some of the highest priority topics in fundamental physics. LHC operation will continue until at least 2035, with ever-increasing performance required from the accelerator complex in order to provide useful statistical reach and from the associated detectors. As such the CMS detector will require significant and comprehensive upgrades in order to maintain performance in the presence of much harsher conditions.

The UK is leading key aspects of the upgrades to the tracking system, end-cap calorimeters and the trigger system. The common element is the development of high throughput digital electronics, and their tailoring to the three specific sub-systems mentioned above. Chris's PhD is focused on developments for the Level 1 trigger system. The trigger is the real time selection of events of potential interest and critical in reducing the data-taking rate to a manageable level. The harsh HL-LHC conditions will require, for the first time, the use of tracking information at the earliest stages of the process. Chris will look at both the actual track finding, focusing on machine learning techniques to remove fake tracks, as well as optimising the use of the tracking information to form vertices and more complex objects. He will need to develop software emulation of these processes before then implementing the algorithms in firmware, as well as validating results with actual test stands.

Please refer to lead proposal