ATLAS rewards industry

Showing excellence in mechanics, electronics and cryogenics, three industries are honoured for their contributions to the ATLAS experiment.


Representatives of the three award-wining companies after the ceremony.

For contributing vital pieces to the ATLAS puzzle, three industries were recognized on Friday 5 May during a supplier awards ceremony. After a welcome and overview of the ATLAS experiment by spokesperson Peter Jenni, CERN Secretary-General Maximilian Metzger stressed the importance of industry to CERN's scientific goals. Close interaction with CERN was a key factor in the selection of each rewarded company, in addition to the high-quality products they delivered to the experiment.

Alu Menziken Industrie AG, of Switzerland, was honoured for the production of 380,000 aluminium tubes for the Monitored Drift Tube Chambers (MDT). As Giora Mikenberg, the Muon System Project Leader stressed, the aluminium tubes were delivered on time with an extraordinary quality and precision. Between October 2000 and January 2004 the tubes, spanning 1300 km, were produced in time for the production sequence of the MDT chambers. The most remarkable result is that the average straightness, even for the long tubes, is around 0.05 mm, never exceeding 0.15 mm.

The Franco-Italian firm STMicroelectronics was rewarded for the development and production of about 40,000 radiation-hard voltage regulators for different ATLAS sub-systems. The regulators are mainly used in the liquid argon front-end electronics and in the power distribution of the Pixel and of the Transition Radiation Tracker. Philippe Farthouat, the ATLAS Electronics Coordinator, recalled that ATLAS needed radiation-hard voltage regulators able to deliver enough current, and there was no such component available on the market. A collaboration between CERN and STMicroelectronics was thus initiated. Despite several subtle technical problems linked to transistor modelling, STMicroelectronics completed the project very successfully.

SB Verksted AS, of Norway, was rewarded for supplying four 50,000-litre cryogenic liquid storage tanks and two valve boxes to the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeters. The job was financially supported by the Norwegian ATLAS project and by a technical collaboration between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, SB Verksted and CERN. Two of the high-pressure tanks are placed at the surface of the ATLAS experimental area and the other two in the cavern. Johan Bremer, the LAr cryogenics Project Leader, explained that the design of the argon tanks was completed within stringent safety, installation and operating conditions and met a high purity level.