The Timepix chip is the first milestone to be achieved by four of the EUDET institutes.

Attendees at the first annual EUDET meeting at the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Munich.

After almost one year of EUDET, things are looking rather good. The more than 100 scientists involved in the EU-funded project on integrated infrastructures for ILC detector R&D reached the major milestones set for the first year. They just held their first annual meeting at the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Munich from 18 to 20 October that brought together all partners, associates, interested institutes, the scientific advisory board and the scientific officer from Brussels responsible for EUDET.

Receiving 7 million Euros from the European Union for building up infrastructures for detector R&D for the ILC, EUDET's total budget is 21 million Euros, with contributions coming from its 31 partner institutes. It will run for another three years and will have built up a well-developed detector landscape for ILC detector work in Europe. EUDET concentrates on creating such infrastructures as large core magnets for a test beam initially at DESY, a high precision pixel beam telescope, a Time Projection Chamber field cage and stacks for test beam calorimeter devices for detector R&D. "The concept is a little difficult to grasp," says project coordinator Joachim Mnich from DESY in Germany, "I often describe it as a 'virtual institute' that is embedded into 'real' R&D collaborations such as CALICE."

All EUDET infrastructures are movable and can in principle be used in any test beam. EUDET has set up the first test beam at DESY and will test a magnet due to arrive soon from KEK. "There will be a need and an interest in testing the detector infrastructures, such as calorimeter prototypes, in other test beams at CERN or Fermilab, for example," says Mnich.

Other EUDET plans call for developing a light-weight TPC field cage, a structure that defines the configuration of the electrical field of the chamber, as a prototype for the ILC detectors. Once the field cage is complete, it will be possible to test large surface amplification devices. The pixel beam telescope will be used for the vertex detectors for the ILC. EUDET's infrastructure will also be used for electromagnetic calorimeter research by providing a tungsten slab – one basic unit for the ILC detector – and then testing the electronics and eventually the silicon devices. Further down the road, EUDET will help build next generation prototype calorimeters in 2009, which will also be put into test beams.

With many future goals set in place, EUDET scientists have the satisfaction of already reaching one milestone. The Timepix chip, a potential readout tool for the time projection chamber, was the first milestone to be achieved by four of the EUDET institutes. In contrast to the existing Medipix chip, it also measures time, giving a three-dimensional picture of the passing particle. The first version of this chip has been designed, produced and tested successfully. "It worked right away," says Mnich, "and it was ready before its cut-off date. I hope we can keep this success rate."

In Europe, such projects as EUROTeV and CARE already focus on funding ILC machine R&D. The EUDET organisation represents the first time that a project will be funded by the EU specifically for ILC detector R&D. "This gives additional money for institutes working on ILC detectors," says Mnich. "It also leads to more structuring because we have some new institutes involved in ILC detector development. EUDET bundles the forces not only in Europe but also tries to engage as much as possible the efforts in the U.S. and Asia to go from small prototypes to larger prototypes for the ILC." More information about the meeting in Munich is available online.

-- Barbara Warmbein