The Pixel Detector: 80 Million Channels and Always Something Interesting to Watch

The ATLAS experiment at CERN is one of six main particle detector experiments of the Large Hadron Collider, located near Geneva, Switzerland. The purpose of the collider is to accelerate particles, typically protons, to fantastic energies, and to collide them into each other, creating extreme conditions not thought to be seen since moments after the Big Bang. Physicists will study these collisions and try to gain insight into the mechanisms controlling our existence. The Pixel Detector is the innermost detector of ATLAS, and my research was focused on quantifying the long-term stability of the Pixel Detector’s threshold calibration settings.