Overview of the Insertable B-Layer (IBL) Project of the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC
Abstract
Several upgrades are foreseen for the high luminosity LHC. During the current LHC shutdown, one of the major upgrade programs for the ATLAS experiment is an upgarde of the inner detector. A new fourth layer of pixels, the Insertable B-Layer (IBL), is planned to be installed by mid 2014 between the existing pixel system and a new beam pipe with a reduced diameter (29 mm outer diameter). The principal motivation of the IBL is to provide an increased tracking robustness allowing to maintain an excellent vertex detector performance and to compensate possible inefficiencies of the current b-layers of Pixel Detector. The IBL requires the development of several new technologies to cope with increased radiation and pixel occupancy and improve the physics performance by reduction of the pixel size. The IBL presents several modifications with respect to the current pixel detector in terms of pixel technology used and the read out electronics. Before the loading of the modules to the staves and mounting staves to the beam pipe, the functionality of these components has to be tested, verified and detailed quality assurance procedure is considered.