THE HV SYSTEM FOR THE ATLAS MDT DETECTOR

INFN Frascati, INFN Pavia and INFN Roma I

September 1999

The Atlas MDT detector is composed of 1194 chambers: 682 are placed in the barrel region, while
512 are placed in the two endcaps. Each chamber is made of two groups of drift tubes glued
together in 3 or 4 layers, named multilayers. They are separated by an aluminum structure named
spacer (apart few chambers in the barrel region, 16 BIS and 32 BEE, that are made of one single
multilayer).
For each chamber a readout side (RO) and a high voltage side (HV) are defined (fig. 1). Inside the
Faraday cage of the HV side, the high voltage is distributed to the single drift tube through a PC
board, named HV hedgehog, plugged into the endplugs directly via pins.

1. System specifications

1.1 High voltage generation. Because of the background radiation and the fringe magnetic
field, the HV generation directly in the cavern (UX15) is not convenient. For this reason the
HV primary generators are put in USA15 (see fig. 2), and through 80 m long cables the HV is
fed to the distribution boards placed in crates near the chambers.

1.2 High voltage segmentation. In case of short circuit of a wire, many drift tubes can be
killed if they are not protected. Ideally, a calibrated fuse put in series toeach drift tube can
avoid such a problem, insulating the short circuited wire by fusing the appropriated fuse with a
dedicated electric line. Unfortunately, such a solution had to be discarded for clearance
problems on the HV hedgehog. An investigation performed on 6 wire detectors of big
experiments around the world has shown that the expectation value of broken wires for the
MDT system is 1.3/year, and it means that the impossibility to implement a protection circuit is
not so dramatical. To avoid a HV trip of many drift tubes in case of one broken wire, the HV
segmentation should be maximized: one HV channel per tube is clearly unrealistic, and also
one HV channel per layer is too expensive, so the adopted solution is one HV channel per
multilayer.
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Fig. 1 – MDT chambers

Fig. 2 – Atlas site

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1.3 Controls. All the power supply systems (LV and HV) must support the CAN bus.

1.4 Operational voltage. At present the baseline gas mixture is ArCO2 93:7, with a nominal
gain of 2⋅104 at 3.18 kV. Among the many mixtures studied in the past years, the maximum
operational voltage was found using ArCO2 80:20 (3.61kV). So the maximum voltage the HV
system must provide was established to be 4 kV.

1.5 Current. The highest current is reached in the endcap zone close to the beam. The total
charge obtained by simulations is 0.6 C/cm, integrated over 10 years and taking in account a
safety factor 5. That means a peak current of 0.81 µA per drift tube for the hottest chamber.
Applying a factor 1.6 for the peak luminosity and another factor 2 for a possible luminosity
increase, the highest current increases up to 2.6 µA per drift tube. For one multilayer (of the
hottest chamber, an EIL) the maximum current is 0.37 mA. The middle and the outer chambers
are made of more tubes with respect to the EIL, but the current is lower, due to the increased
distance from the beam. The required maximum current generated by the HV system must be
at least 0.5 mA per multilayer .

1.6 Curing. It was experimentally shown that it is possible to remove the carbon residual on the
inner surface of the tubes, that causes gas pollution, applying to the wire a negative voltage of
about 2.5 kV with a current of about 1 µA/cm. This technique allows to increase the lifetime of
the drift tubes and it should be used before the chamber installation. The HV system does not
make provision for the curing.

1.7 System parameters. The voltage variations due to the accuracy, to the repetibility and to
the electrical and thermal stability of the HV system must be negligible. A 20% variation in the
gas gain (G) makes the space resolution worse by 20 µm. The maximum gas gain variation must
be not greater than 5%, and assuming a ratio ∆G/G = 17 ∆V/V, the maximum allowed voltage
variation must be lower than 0.3%, i.e. 10V.

1.8 Ground connection. The HV ground must be decoupled from the signal ground for each
chamber.

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2. HV system implementation

The proposed system is based on three different blocks (fig. 3):

- HV distribution to the single drift tubes inside the Faraday cage by means of HV hedgehog
boards;
- HV distribution to the multilayers by means of boards (distributors) placed in crates near the
chambers;
- HV primary generation in USA15.

2.1 HV hedgehog boards. Each board supplies 24 drift tubes, 8 per layer in the 3 layer
chambers and 6 per layer in the 4 layer chambers. The circuit for each drift tube (fig. 4) is
composed of a 1 MΩ resistor plus 500 pF HV capacitor to bypass the HV and to avoid the signal
propagation to the adjacent drift tubes, and a 390 Ω resistor that terminates the drift tube wire.
The 1 MΩ resistor is a Philips VR68 type with 1 W power dissipation, to avoid a possible
burning in case of a wire short circuit, and the value was chosen in such a way as to get a
negligible voltage drop at the maximum current (< 3 V). The terminating resistor is put in series
to the wire, instead of the HV capacitor, in order to minimize the crosstalk due to the board stray
capacitances.
In parallel to the 1 MΩ resistor there is an inversely polarized 6 kV diode (Philips BY8406),
which function is to limit the current flowing in the resistor during the curing phase with
negative voltage.
Each HV hedgehog is connected to the adjacent one by means of gold plated jumpers. The first
hedgehog in the chain is connected, by means of Noryl connectors, to a patch panel, that receives
the HV through a RG58 cable from the SHV connector on the Faraday cage.

2.2 Distribution boards. They are composed of the regulation circuit and the voltage and
current monitor circuits for each multilayer (fig. 5).
The maximum current is limited to 0.5-0.7 mA, and each board can supply from 12 to 24
multilayers, depending on the allowed power dissipation and the available space. In fig. 5 the
modularity 12 is adopted for sake of simplicity.
Due to the high number of parameters to be set and monitored, the distribution board is divided
in two (or more in the modularity 24) blocks. Each block has its own controller, capable of
managing up to 6 multilayers.

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 The HV – signal ground decoupling is realized on board by means of resistor – capacitor blocks,
which values will be determined experimentally. Each controller receives the HV from the
primary generators through RG58 cables, and exchanges the data with the master in USA15
through an otpical fibre connection.
2.2.1 Modularity. Each distributor supplies at least 12 multilayers, and receives the HV from
two (or more) RG58 cables. The distributors will be 200, in the case of modularity 12, or
100, in the case of modularity 24,. There are 20 racks availables in the corridors in between
the chambers, each one with 4 crates for the HV and the LV. Taking in account one crate
per rack for the HV, the 200 distributors can be placed in 20 crates containing 10 boards
each. This allows an easy and optimal distribution of the cables to the chambers, and a
reduction of the power consumption for each crate.
The board dimension depends on its power consumption and on the number of SHV
connectors to be placed on the front panel. The height of the boards should be no more
than 6 U, so that 9 U crates with fan units can be used.

2.3 Primary generators. They are located in USA15, at a distance of 80 m from the detector,
and they are composed of the HV generators and the master controller, that manages all the
controllers of the distributors.
Each primary HV channel must provide 3.5 mA at 4kV, in order to supply up to 3 chambers.
One primary board should host up to 10 HV generators, so that the total number of boards is 40.
The power consumption of each board is of the order of 200 W, so no more than 10 boards can
be accomodated in one crate to avoid excessive power dissipation. The modularity could be 4
crates with 10 boards each or 5 crates with 8 boards each.
Only one crate will host the master controller, while the other 3 (or 4) crates will host slave
controllers.

3. Prototype

The key element of the HV system is the distributor. Infact, the primary generators could be
commercial products, already available or that will be available on the market.
The distributor must be tested at a prototype level, in order to check the functionality of the
regulators and the controllers for both hardware and software. Moreover, it is necessary to test the
ground decoupling.

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The prototype should implement one half distribution board, that is one controller and all the
circuitry for supplying 3 chambers, plus the low voltages for supplying the electronics. The positive
HV power supply should be provided via a SHV connector from outside. (fig. 6).
The optical link between the distributor controller and the master controller is not necessary and
should be replaced with a standard RS-232 serial port, that will allow the control of the prototype
through a PC.
The prototype case should be a standard 19” chassis.

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Fig. 3 – Block diagram of the MDT HV system

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Fig. 4 – Block diagram of the hedgehog board

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Fig. 5 – Block diagram of the distribution board

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Fig. 6 – Block diagram of the prototype

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