trigger daq

Ten days of Trigger and Data Acquisition at ISOTDAQ

This April marked the 10th anniversary of the International School of Trigger and Data Acquisition (ISOTDAQ). It was a fantastic event that united researchers in physics, computing and engineering, ranging from undergraduate students to post-doctoral scientists. The goal of the school was to teach the "arts and crafts" of triggering and data-acquisition for high-energy physics experiments through a series of lectures and hands-on laboratory exercises.

26 April 2019

In conversation with Nick Ellis, one of the architects of the ATLAS trigger

A long-standing member of the ATLAS Collaboration, CERN physicist Nick Ellis was one of the original architects of the ATLAS Trigger. Working in the 1980s and 1990s, Nick led groups developing innovative ways to move and process huge quantities of data for the next generation of colliders. It was a challenge some thought was impossible to meet. Nick currently leads the CERN ATLAS Trigger and Data Acquisition Group and shared his wealth of experience as a key part of the ATLAS Collaboration.

10 June 2018

From ATLAS Around the World: Triggers (and dark) matter

To the best of our knowledge, it took the Universe about 13.798 billion years to allow funny looking condensates of mostly oxygen, carbon and hydrogen to ponder on their own existence. Some particularly curious specimens became scientists, founded CERN, dug several rings into the ground near Geneva, Switzerland, built the Large Hadron Collider, and also installed a handful of large detectors along the way.

27 July 2015

ATLAS awards Long Shutdown 1 achievements

The ATLAS Outstanding Achievement Awards 2015 were presented on 18 June to 26 physicists and engineers, in 11 groups, for their excellent work carried out during Long Shutdown 1 (LS1).

25 June 2015

From ATLAS Around the World: Faster and faster!

Faster and Faster! This is how it gets as soon as LS1 ends and the first collisions of LHC Run 2 approaches. As you might have noticed, at particle physics experiments we LOVE acronyms! LS1 stands for the first Long Shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider.

24 June 2015

Review before Run 2

ATLAS is ready for Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) where proton beams will be collided together at a higher centre of mass collision energy of 13 TeV, and reach higher luminosities than ever before.

1 June 2015

Dealing With Data

In the first run of the Large Hadron Collider, almost a billion proton-proton collisions took place every second in the centre of the ATLAS detector. That amounts to enough data to fill 100,000 CDs each second. If you stacked the CDs on top of each other, in a year it would reach the moon four times. Only a small fraction of the observed proton–proton collisions have interesting characteristics that might lead to discoveries. How does ATLAS deal with this mountain of data?

16 January 2014
16 January 2014

Needle in a haystack

The LHC is designed to collide bunches of protons every 25 ns, i.e., at a 40 MHz rate (40 million/second). In each of these collisions, something happens. Since there is no way we can collect data at this rate, we try to pick only the interesting events, which occur very infrequently; however, this is easier said than done. Experiments like ATLAS employ a very sophisticated filtering system to keep only those events that we are interested in. This is called the trigger system, and it works because the interesting events have unique signatures that can be used to distinguish them from the uninteresting ones.

16 March 2012

3 Firsts for ATLAS in 2010

It has been a BUSY weekend! The LHC has been working around the clock get the machine commissioned, and ATLAS has been enjoying the many Firsts that have resulted.

15 March 2010

Gearing-up for the 2010 run!

ATLAS has been taking cosmic rays data this month exercising new features of the data acquisition, including protocols to start and control the run.

25 February 2010

First Integrated Run in 2010

Today ATLAS has started the integrated runs. This has happened before, nevertheless this is the first time ATLAS subdetectors get together after the winter break, a lot of work has been done since then.

2 February 2010

Triggering and measuring bent cosmic muon tracks with the muon spectrometer barrel for the first time

Data have recently been collected with the toroidal magnetic field will provide for the first time the measurement of the cosmic ray muons' momenta in the ATLAS experiment and allow studies on trigger optimization, chamber calibration, chamber alignment and magnetic field maps. More than one million events were acquired. They are now being analyzed by enthusiastic members of the collaboration.

22 December 2006

Progress on the level-1 calorimeter trigger

The level-1 calorimeter trigger (L1Calo) has recently passed a number of major hurdles. The various electronic modules that make up the trigger are either in full production or are about to be, and preparations in the ATLAS pit are well advanced.

3 November 2006