The software of the ATLAS beam pick-up based LHC monitoring system

Abstract

The ATLAS BPTX stations are comprised of electrostatic button pick-up detectors, located 175 m away along the beam pipe on both sides of ATLAS. The pick-ups are installed as a part of the LHC beam instrumentation and used by ATLAS for timing purposes. The signals from the ATLAS BPTX detectors are used both in the trigger system and for a stand-alone monitoring system for the LHC beams and timing signals. The monitoring software measures the phase between collisions and clock with high accuracy in order to guarantee a stable phase relationship for optimal signal sampling in the sub-detector front-end electronics. It also measures the properties of the individual bunches and the structure of the beams. In this paper, the BPTX monitoring software is described, its algorithms explained and a few example monitoring displays shown. In addition, results from the monitoring system during the first period of single beam running in September 2008 are presented.