European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN)

In the experimental HEP, we are involved in the development, testing and fabrication of 432 Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC) required for the CMS muon detector at CERN. The RPC has an excellent time resolution i.e. of the order of 1-2 nanoseconds and it will be used for the bunch tagging at LHC. At the national level, this project is a joint collaboration of NCP and PAEC, whereas at international level, we have partners from Italy, China, Korea and USA. The RPC is a gaseous detector made using two parallel-plates of bakelite with high resistivity. Each RPC for CMS will be equipped with 96 electronic channels, which will be readout are based on 0.14 micron BiCMOS technology. For the complete system, number of readout channels are around 50,000.

NCP has an experimental high energy physics laboratory which is equipped with the high speed and advanced data acquisition system based on VME standards. This laboratory is used for prototyping and testing of RPCs at present.

High performance and data intense computing is the back bone of modern-day science. There are stringent requirements for computing at LHC. To exploit the full physics potential of LHC data in comprehensive manner, we need Linux based PC farms, data storage capacity in 100s of terabyte and excellent network connectivity starting with one Mbps and growing rapidly to 10 Mbps. For the detector simulation and for understanding the rich physics at LHC, we will need computing power in teraflops. NCP will require high performance computing for accelerator physics, computational condensed matter physics and theoretical particle physics. For accessing and managing the LHC data novel techniques like the concept of data and computing grids are used. CERN has evolved a new project called the LHC Computing Grid (LCG). NCP is a partner of CERN in this project and it is the only LCG node in Pakistan.