TWEPP

TWEPP
Name	TWEPP
Status	Active
Genre	Academic conference
Frequency	Annual
Established	1997
Discipline	High-energy physics instrumentation, electronics
Country	International
Participants	Physicists, engineers, technicians

TWEPP

TWEPP is an international series of technical workshops and conferences focused on electronics for particle physics experiments, detector development, radiation-tolerant design, and trigger and data acquisition systems. It gathers researchers and engineers from major laboratories and universities to present hardware prototypes, firmware and software solutions, and system-level integration studies. Participants often include representatives from institutions such as CERN, Fermilab, Brookhaven National Laboratory, DESY, and KEK, as well as collaborations tied to experiments like ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, ALICE, and Belle II.

Overview

TWEPP functions as a forum where specialists in microelectronics, signal processing, radiation effects, and systems engineering exchange results relevant to experiments at facilities such as Large Hadron Collider, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, European Organization for Nuclear Research, and neutrino programs at J-PARC. Typical topics presented address analog and digital integrated circuit design, radiation-hardening techniques used at Microelectronic Center of North Carolina, sensor front ends developed for CMS Phase-1 Upgrade and ATLAS IBL, field-programmable gate array (FPGA) development connected to projects involving Xilinx and Intel (formerly Altera), and data acquisition architectures similar to those deployed for NOvA and DUNE.

History

The workshop series began in the late 1990s as instrument builders responded to the demands of new collider experiments and upgrades. Early meetings reflected work aligned with projects at LEP and pre-LHC detector R&D, while later editions shifted emphasis toward LHC upgrades, high-luminosity challenges associated with High-Luminosity LHC, and experiments at next-generation facilities such as FCC concepts and IHEP-led initiatives. Over successive years the participant base expanded from European microelectronics groups and US national laboratories to include collaborators from KEK, TRIUMF, Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), and industrial partners including STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments.

Conference Scope and Topics

Sessions cover a breadth of technical themes: mixed-signal ASICs used in front-end electronics for detectors like Pixel Detectors and Silicon Microstrip Detectors; radiation testing methodologies employed with facilities such as CERN Proton Synchrotron and TRIUMF proton irradiation center; timing and synchronization systems similar to those in White Rabbit networks; trigger algorithms and hardware applied in experiments like LHCb Upgrade; and high-speed optical links leveraging transceivers developed for Belle II and ATLAS Phase-II Upgrade. Panel discussions often link to industrial standards from JEDEC and IEEE, and workshops address cross-cutting technology for calorimetry readout, muon systems, and time-of-flight instrumentation used in ALICE Upgrade and cosmic-ray experiments.

Organization and Governance

TWEPP is organized by an international steering committee composed of senior researchers and engineers drawn from host laboratories, universities, and collaborating institutes. Hosts rotate among institutions; recent venues have included CERN, Prague (Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences), Erlangen (FAU), and Orsay (Université Paris-Saclay). The steering committee sets guidelines for program committees responsible for peer review, session chairs, and proceedings editors, often coordinating with program committees of companion conferences such as IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium, ACAT, and Real Time Conference. Organizing institutions manage logistics and liaise with funding agencies including European Research Council and national science foundations like NSF and UK Research and Innovation when applicable.

Proceedings and Publications

Technical contributions presented at TWEPP are typically published as proceedings volumes, conference notes, and technical reports. Proceedings have appeared in collections associated with laboratory report series and conference proceedings archives, and selected papers are later submitted to journals such as Journal of Instrumentation, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A, and IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. The review process for proceedings emphasizes reproducible laboratory measurements, radiation qualification data, and design-validation results for ASICs, FPGAs, and optical-link systems; many contributions include cross-references to standard test campaigns performed at facilities like PSI and GANIL.

Notable Meetings and Impact

Specific TWEPP meetings have been influential during major upgrade cycles: workshops preceding the HL-LHC upgrade timeframe enabled coordination of front-end ASIC roadmaps for ATLAS and CMS; editions held near periods of intense R&D catalyzed adoption of FPGA-based data concentrators used in LHCb and neutrino-detector readouts adopted by DUNE collaborators. Presentations describing radiation-hard double-column pixel readout chips, fast-timing modules, and high-bandwidth optical transceivers have fed directly into procurement and integration strategies at CERN experiment upgrades and at facilities such as DESY Test Beam Facility. TWEPP continues to shape instrumentation choices for next-generation experiments proposed at FCC and regional accelerator projects supported by European Strategy for Particle Physics planning processes.

Category:Conferences in physics