The LHCb experiment is dedicated to precision measurements of CP violation and rare decays of B hadrons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (Geneva). The initial configuration and expected performance of the detector and associated systems, as established by test beam measurements and simulation studies, is described.

The Gigabit Link Interface Board (GLIB) is an evaluation platform and an easy entry point for users of high speed optical links in high energy physics experiments. Its intended use ranges from optical link evaluation in the laboratory to control, triggering and data acquisition from remote modules in beam or irradiation tests. The GLIB is an FPGA-based Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) conceived to serve a small and simple system residing either inside a Micro Telecommunications Computing Architecture (µTCA) crate, or on a bench with a link to a PC. This paper presents the architecture of the GLIB, its features as well as examples of its use in different setups.

SLHC experiment upgrades will make substantial use of optical links to enable highspeed data readout and control. The Versatile Link project will develop and assess optical link architectures and components suitable for deployment at SLHC. The on-detector element will be a bidirectional opto-electronic module: the Versatile Transceiver (VTRx) that will be based on a commercially available module type minimally customized to meet the constraints of the SLHC on-detector environment in terms of mass, volume, power consumption, operational temperature and radiation environment. This paper brings together the status of development of the VTRx in terms of packaging, environmental testing and functional testing.

The structure of the CMS inner tracking system has been studied using nuclear interactions of hadrons striking its material. Data from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded in 2015 at the LHC are used to reconstruct millions of secondary vertices from these nuclear interactions. Precise positions of the beam pipe and the inner tracking system elements, such as the pixel detector support tube, and barrel pixel detector inner shield and support rails, are determined using these vertices. These measurements are important for detector simulations, detector upgrades, and to identify any changes in the positions of inactive elements.

The AdvancedTCA standard has been selected as one of the hardware platforms for the upgrades of the back-end electronics of the CMS and ATLAS experiments of the Large Hadron Collider. In this context, the CERN EP-ESE group has designed and produced an IPMC mezzanine card for the management of AdvancedTCA blades. This paper presents the CERN-IPMC hardware and the software environment to be used for its customization and describes a test pad that can also be used as a development kit.