Power supply distribution system for calorimeters at the LHC beyond the nominal luminosity

This paper investigates the use of switching converters for the power supply distribution to calorimeters in the ATLAS experiment when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be upgraded beyond the nominal luminosity. Due to the highly hostile environment the converters must operate in, all the main aspects are considered in the investigation, from the selection of the switching converter topologies to the thermal analysis of components and PCBs, with attention to reliability issues of power devices subject to ionizing radiations. The analysis focuses on the particular, but crucial, case of the power supplies for calorimeters, though several outcomes of the research can profitably be applied to other detectors like muon chambers.