Upgrades of the Tracker and Trigger of the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC

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The deeper understanding of phenomena to be studied at the LHC will have repercussions for the commercial manufacturers, the general public, and policy makers.

Substantial procurements will be necessary during the course of this project, in the form of advanced digital electronic processing boards and Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). These offer opportunities to commercial suppliers, mostly likely UK-based, as prototypes manufactured during the R&D phase preceding this proposal have successfully been manufactured to a high standard by UK companies. Future boards have even more demanding specifications so will push the limits of manufacturing technology.

Electronic components of a substantial value will be purchased during this project, offering opportunities for international producers and local suppliers.

The ASIC designs will be carried out in collaboration with UK engineering designers, based in RAL. Their expertise will increase as a consequence and there will be training opportunities and turnover of staff, with further benefits to industry.

Trained postgraduate students will reach doctoral standards in this project and they will provide additional expert researchers whose skills will be of high commercial value. Some of them are expected to migrate to the commercial world following graduation.

There is wide interest in the physics and technology of the LHC. This project will contribute to maintaining and enhancing that interest by producing world-class science opportunities and advanced technological by-products in the form of CMS instrumentation.

Finally, the scientific results from the LHC will shed deep light on the mysteries of nature by improving our understanding of the 5% of the world explained by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The results are also likely to begin to allow us to probe the mystery of dark matter, which appears to make up about 25% of the universe, about whose composition we know almost nothing. Given past progress in science, it is unlikely that an improved understanding of nature at this level will not eventually lead to benefits to humankind, although it is impossible to predict in what way. The situation is analogous to that in the nineteenth century before the impact of classical electromagnetism, quantum theory, and relativity, all of which have had a profound effect on modern life and technology.