Development of a read out driver for ATLAS micromegas based on the Scalable Readout System

Abstract

With future LHC luminosity upgrades, part of the ATLAS muon spectrometer has to be changed, to cope with the increased flux of uncorrelated neutron and gamma particles. Micromegas detectors were chosen as precision tracker for the New Small Wheels, that will replace the current Small Wheel muon detector stations during the LHC shutdown foreseen for 2018. To read out these detectors together with all other ATLAS subsystems, a readout driver was developed to integrate these micromegas detectors into the ATLAS data acquisition infrastructure. The readout driver is based on the Scalable Readout System, and its tasks include trigger handling, slow control, event building and data transmission to the high-level readout systems. This article describes the layout and functionalities of this readout driver and its components, as well as a test of its functionalities in the cosmic ray facility of Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich.