An Optical Bus for Level 1 Trigger Designs in Particle Physics Detectors

Future particle physics experiments at the high energy frontier, such as LHC, HL-LHC, ILC, CLIC or Multi-TeV Muon Collider, will all require silicon detectors capable of reconstructing charged particle trajectories with high accuracy in the presence of significant high occupancy. These experiments will impose stringent demands on the data links to transfer the data from the silicon detector to the data acquisition system, either just for readout purposes or for triggering purposes, or both. The large amounts of data required from silicon detectors in these experiments require large parallel or very high- speed serial data links, which become cumbersome and physically impractical in large detector arrays. To address this requirement, Vega Wave Systems proposes to develop 40Gbps optical links for Level 1 Trigger designs based on silicon optical-bench (SiOB) technology and external modulators. The advantages of using SiOB technology include a dramatic reduction in the number of links required, lower mass, the potential for improved radiation hardness, and built-in redundancy for improved reliability and improved immunity to single event upset (SEU). An additional advantage of the external modulator is that the laser diode is external to the high radiation environment. 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.