Construction and Testing of the TileCal Digitizer and an Evaluation of the Discovery Potential for R-Hadrons at the ATLAS Detector at the LHC

Abstract: This thesis comprises two parts. In the first part an overview is given of the Standard Model, Supersymmetry and R-hadrons. R-hadrons are predicted within the framework of the Split-SUSY theory, in which the gluino can have a sufficiently long lifetime to hadronise into so-called R-hadrons. These will then propagate through the ATLAS detector as (meta)stable particles. The R-hadrons, which interact strongly, have the property of changing electric charge in interactions as they move through matter. In this thesis a strategy to search for R-hadrons with the ATLAS detcector is developed.The second part describes the ATLAS detector and the developement of the digitizer system of the ATLAS hadronic calorimeter. The digitizer system is the digitial readout system, in which data is read out from the detector to data buffers via an optical link. In the LHC environment, the operation of radiation-hard circuitry is essential. Therefore a quality control program was used to control that the design conforms to the requirements of radiation tolerance. An important part of the work was to test the devices to study their functionality and properties. This work is described in this thesis.