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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 49: Electronics, Trigger, DAQ II

T 49.7: Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2026, 17:45–18:00, KH 00.023

ITkPix Read-out Chip Software Emulator for the ITk Pixel Online DAQ Software — Matthias Drescher, Jörn Große-Knetter, •Timo Pospiech, Arnulf Quadt, and Ali Skaf — II. Physikalisches Institut, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

During the approaching ATLAS HL-LHC phase 2 upgrade, the current Inner Detector will be replaced by the all-silicon Inner Tracker (ITk). In particular, the ITk pixel part will be composed of around 9k detector modules built with about 30k ITkPix read-out chips. The data acquisition (DAQ) read-out system needs to deal with the tremendous challenges it faces and, of course, be validated before the commissioning of the new ITk. With the read-out software as the head of the chain, it needs to be running reliably to acquire data and test other components of the DAQ chain, ideally at a large-scale system level.

To help with the development and debugging of the read-out software, a software model of the on-detector hardware is needed. As such, this project focuses on developing a standalone C++ software emulator of the ITkPix front-end, which can be used for that purpose. The software emulator faithfully replicates the behaviour of the ITkPix-V2 chip, which is the final production read-out chip. With that, the behaviour of the emulator is as close to the real conditions as possible. The emulator is validated against already existing read-out chain tools and will be integrated in the online DAQ software, allowing system-level development and debugging, but could also be used during actual data taking for validation purposes.

Keywords: ITk Pixel detector; DAQ read-out system; Software emulator