DEMONSTRATOR SYSTEM FOR THE PHASE-I UPGRADE OF THE TRIGGER READOUT ELECTRONICS OF THE ATLAS LIQUID ARGON CALORIMETERS AT THE LHC

I started my Ph.D. at the Physics Department of the Universit`a degli Studi di Milano in November 2014. I carried out my research activity within the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, mainly focusing on the upgrade of the ATLAS Liquid Argon (LAr) electromagnetic calorimeter Phase-I trigger electronics. The main topic of my doctoral project is the implementation of VHDL firmware for the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) of the new calorimeter trigger electronics. I spent the first of the three Ph.D. years working in Milano and the last two years at CERN, supported by a contract awarded from the ATLAS LAr calorimeter group. During the three years of activity, I contributed to the development and maintenance of the FPGA readout firmware for the LAr Phase-I demonstrator system, set up and installed in the ATLAS detector during summer 2014. The purpose of the system is to validate the energy reconstruction and collect real collision data using a pre-prototype of the future front-end and back-end electronics. In addition, I joined the group working on the firmware development for the FPGAs of the new Phase-I back-end boards. I was asked to be in charge of the firmware module for decoding the Timing Trigger and Control (TTC) signals coming from the LHC central trigger processor.