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NEAL HARTMAN: The way these pixels are made is people
often say it's like an onion so several different layers and
many, many layers actually. And the pixel detector actually
consists of the three smallest layers, basically, in Atlas
until we inserted the IBL which we just finished. So that fourth
layer, the IBL, is actually now the innermost layer.
KAROLOS POTAMIANOS: IBL stands for Insertable B Layer.
Insertable because it was inserted inside of the pixel
detector. The pixel detector is the most inner part of
the detector because it's the first detection layer we
have after the collision. So it's really next to the bean
pipe and IBL will be even more central because it's
inside of the pixel detector so it's going to be the first
point of interaction of a particle coming from the
collision point. The pixel detector is really like a
camera. It's like the cameras you have at home except that
it's much bigger. So instead of having just one sensor like your
camera has it has many, many sensors which we put next to
each other. The more pixels you have the sharper it is. So we
want to take the sharpest possible pictures of that
collision and this is really what the IBL is about. What we
had to do is open the whole Atlas detector, take pieces out
and insert IBL and then close back the detector before we can
get it operating again.
NEAL HARTMAN: So the IBL is like about this
big in diameter, about 100 millimeters in diameter,
it's about seven meters long and so what that
means is that we had to lower this very, very, skinny long
thing than push it in this basically little hole, okay, so
felt like drilling or something like that. And, in fact, that's
the way all of these things are assembled. The installation went
actually really, really well. In fact, I would say, without
really almost any hiccups. In fact, it only took about an hour
or hour and a half to actually slide the IBL all the way in. So
when you consider the fact that it's several years' worth of
work rolled up in this tiny package and then you kind of
slide it into place in the span of an hour and half or something
like that, two hours, let's say, that's pretty fast progress. So
the IBL is actually very, very small. It's, in fact, it's only
about this big in diameter and only about that long. But in
that space we actually managed to pack the work of basically
more than 40 institutes internationally and so that's
actually really emblematic of the kind of international
collaboration that we have at CERN. The initial layout of the
IBL was actually a U.S. based deliverable. I mean, that was
something that I actually contributed initially. And then
the chips are actually a U.S. based design as well. So, in
fact, I guess you could say the two most important parts of the
IBL in reality come from the U.S. but that's, maybe, we don't
want to be too proud, I guess, you know. But it's very
gratifying to actually see this initial concept as something
that was stated as impossible at the outset to see that it
actually not only was it possible but that it was made,
assembled and then actually so elegantly inserted into the
Atlas detector, into really the heart of the Atlas detector. It
was very, very gratifying to see all that come to fruition
especially given that people thought it couldn't be done
to begin with.
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