Particle colliders such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory have circular, counter-rotating particle beams which are focused such that they cross and collide at a few places around the collider ring. Large, complex particle detectors are located at these positions to record and measure the new particles resulting from the particle beam collisions. The location of each collision is called the ¿primary vertex position¿ and ideally is centered exactly within the particle detector, but in fact varies over some distance along the beam path. If a fast and precise measurement of this primary vertex position is available, then that information can be used as part of the detector ¿trigger¿ to record data from only those collisions which are ideally located. This process will significantly increase the efficiency and sensitivity of the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR) and similar existing detectors. For new, smaller detectors such as the proposed Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT), which have physical dimensions smaller than the distribution of the primary vertex position, the efficiency gains are magnified. We propose to design and build new electronics to provide a high-resolution, real-time vertex position measurement for collider experiments and other applications. The proposed electronics will provide increased efficiency and sensitivity to the STAR and other detectors in a very cost effective manner, compared to the large capital and operational costs of the detectors and their collider environments. Specifically, a fast vertex position measurement can be used as part of the experimental trigger to provide improved operational efficiency (more useful data for a given experimental run time) by including more ¿usable¿ hits for the calorimeters, more accurate track reconstruction seeds for both offline and high-level online triggers (resulting in faster data processing), real-time triggering for events within the very small vertex extent of proposed new detectors and fast detector-only data streams. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee The capability is flexible and general, and creates significant commercial opportunities as a key component in diverse systems for 1) time-of-flight mass spectrometry, 2) time-of-flight positron emission tomography, 3) time-resolved confocal microscopy, 4) laser distance measurement for three dimensional imaging and ultra precision machining and 5) remote atmospheric sensing via laser induced, time resolved florescence. These larger systems are addressing cutting edge problems in life sciences, medical imaging, advanced manufacturing, environmental monitoring and homeland security.
