Radiation-Hardened, High-Speed Parallel VCSEL Links for High-Energy Physics

Future particle physics experiments at the high-energy frontier such as the High Luminosity- Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), International Linear Collider (ILC) or Multi-TeV Muon Collider, will all require silicon detectors capable of reconstructing charged particle trajectories with high accuracy in the presence of extremely high luminosity (1035/cm2/sec in the case of the HL-LHC). These experiments will generate enormous volumes of data. Collecting, managing and analyzing this data is a major priority for the high-energy physics community. Radiation-hardened fiber optic transmitters are being developed to deliver this data from the high radiation environment near the silicon detectors. VCSEL-based transmitters are believed to be the best solution because of the higher radiation tolerance compared to edge-emitting lasers. The technical effectiveness of how this problem or situation is being addressed: To address this requirement, this project will develop a high-speed (480Gb/s), low-power, radiation-tolerant optical transmitter using vertical-cavity surface-emitting arrays for trigger and data extraction. This data rate of this optical link is a factor of four times greater than the data rates currently being developed for high-energy physics and represents a significant advancement on the current state-of-the-art. In Phase I of this program all technical objectives were successfully met, including (1) design of a 120 Gb/s optical transmitter; (2) fabrication and characterization of this 120 Gb/s transmitter that actually worked at 150 Gb/s; and (3) initial design of the radiation-tolerant 480 Gb/s transmitter to be developed in Phase II. In Phase II, the initial design of the radiation-tolerant 480 Gb/s transmitter will be built and tested. Results will be used to develop, build, test, and perform preliminary qualification testing of the final version of the radiation-tolerant 480 Gb/s transmitter. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The development of this optical link will have potential commercial benefits for high-speed backplane and databus applications in high-speed or massively parallel computing. The market impact could be significant for both data centers and high-speed networks.