Abstract: The “Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon Time-Projection Chamber” (NEXT) is intended to investigate the neutrinoless double beta decay of Xe-136, which requires a severe suppression of potential backgrounds; therefore, an extensive screening and selection process is underway to control the radiopurity levels of the materials to be used in the experimental set-up of NEXT. The detector design combines the measurement of the topological signature of the event for background discrimination with the energy resolution optimization. Separate energy and tracking readout planes are based on different sensors: photomultiplier tubes for calorimetry and silicon multi-pixel photon counters for tracking. The design of a radiopure tracking plane, in direct contact with the gas detector medium, was specially challenging since the needed components like printed circuit boards, connectors, sensors or capacitors have typically, according to available information in databases and in the literature, activities too large for experiments requiring ultra-low background conditions. Here, the radiopurity assessment of tracking readout components based on gamma-ray spectroscopy using ultra-low background germanium detectors at the Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc (Spain) is described. According to the obtained results, radiopure enough printed circuit boards made of kapton and copper, silicon photomultipliers and other required components, fulfilling the requirement of an overall background level in the region of interest of at most 8 x 10(-4) counts keV(-1) kg(-1) y(-1), have been identified.

Abstract: Proton therapy is a cancer treatment technique currently in growth since it offers advantages with respect to conventional X-ray and gamma-ray radiotherapy. In particular, better control of the dose deposition allowing to reach higher conformity in the treatments causing less secondary effects. However, in order to take full advantage of its potential, improvements in treatment planning and dose verification are required. A new prototype of proton computed tomography scanner is proposed to design more accurate and precise treatment plans for proton therapy. Our prototype is formed by double-sided silicon strip detectors and scintillators of LaBr3(Ce) with high energy resolution and fast response. Here, the results obtained from an experiment performed using a 100-MeV proton beam are presented. Proton radiographs of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) samples of 50-mm thickness with spatial patterns in aluminum were taken. Their properties were studied, including reproduction of the dimensions, spatial resolution, and sensitivity to different materials. Structures of up to 2 mm are well resolved and the sensitivity of the system was enough to distinguish the thicknesses of 10 mm of aluminum or PMMA. The spatial resolution of the images was 0.3 line pairs per mm (MTF-10%). This constitutes the first step to validate the device as a proton radiography scanner.

Abstract: The LHCb detector is a forward spectrometer at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The experiment is designed for precision measurements of CP violation and rare decays of beauty and charm hadrons. In this paper the performance of the various LHCb sub-detectors and the trigger system are described, using data taken from 2010 to 2012. It is shown that the design criteria of the experiment have been met. The excellent performance of the detector has allowed the LHCb collaboration to publish a wide range of physics results, demonstrating LHCb's unique role, both as a heavy flavour experiment and as a general purpose detector in the forward region.

Abstract: EUDAQ is a generic data acquisition software developed for use in conjunction with common beam telescopes at charged particle beam lines. Providing high-precision reference tracks for performance studies of new sensors, beam telescopes are essential for the research and development towards future detectors for high-energy physics. As beam time is a highly limited resource, EUDAQ has been designed with reliability and ease-of-use in mind. It enables flexible integration of different independent devices under test via their specific data acquisition systems into a top-level framework. EUDAQ controls all components globally, handles the data flow centrally and synchronises and records the data streams. Over the past decade, EUDAQ has been deployed as part of a wide range of successful test beam campaigns and detector development applications.

Abstract: We present an approach to construct position-sensitive silicon detectors with an integrated cooling circuit. Tests on samples demonstrate that a very modest liquid flow very effectively cool the devices up to a power dissipation of over 10 W/cm(2). The liquid flow is found to have a negligible impact on the mechanical stability. A finite-element simulation predicts the cooling performance to an accuracy of approximately 10%.