100,000 converters in Large Hadron Collider data gathering system
More than 100,000 Analog Devices' AD9042 12bit a/d converter have been deployed in CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle collider. The LHC, scheduled to restart operations later this year after an earlier false start, is designed to help scientists understand the fundamental nature of matter by studying the debris created by the collision of sub atomic particles.
Within the LHC, two beams of subatomic particles – either protons or lead ions – travel in opposite directions. The two beams collide head on at very high energy and researchers will study the particles created in the collisions using special detectors.
"Analog Devices' data converters play an important role inside the Large Hadron Collider," said Hans Rykaczewski, resource manager at CERN. "The converters need to be radiation hard and reliable because they must function properly for decades in a high radiation environment. Analog Devices' converters have the speed and dynamic range we need to measure the energy captured by one of the 64,000 lead tungstate crystals. These crystals measure the energy of photons, electrons and positrons."
