Forward Diffractive Detector upgrade for ALICE

The general goal of the thesis is to familiarise the student, in a practical way, with instrumentation in high-energy physics. In particular, the student will get experience with detectors based on scintillators and photosensors as used at the LHC.
The Forward Diffractive Detector (FDD) is part of ALICE's Fast Interaction Trigger system. FDD, built here at the Faculty, is installed and working in the ALICE experiment. This detector aims to contribute to studies of the strong interaction (QCD, one of the fundamental forces of nature) by tagging photon-induced and diffractive processes produced in particle collisions at very high energies. In addition, this detector contributes to the determination of luminosity in ALICE.
As part of the thesis, the student will build and test a prototype for a new detector design to improve the performance of FDD, aiming at reducing the width of the output pulse to below 20 ns. The prototypes will be tested in the ALICE cavern.