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The Gamma Factory initiative proposes to develop novel research tools at CERN by producing, accelerating, and storing highly relativistic, partially stripped ion beams in the SPS and LHC storage rings. By exciting the electronic degrees of freedom of the stored ions with lasers, high‐energy narrow‐band photon beams will be produced by properly collimating the secondary radiation that is peaked in the direction of ions' propagation. Their intensities, up to 1017 photons per second, will be several orders of magnitude higher than those of the presently operating light sources in the particularly interesting γ–ray energy domain reaching up to 400 MeV. This article reviews opportunities that may be afforded by utilizing the primary beams for spectroscopy of partially stripped ions circulating in the storage ring, as well as the atomic‐physics opportunities made possible by the use of the secondary high‐energy photon beams. The Gamma Factory will enable ground‐breaking experiments in spectroscopy and novel ways of testing fundamental symmetries of nature. 

Abstract The semiconductor tracker (SCT) is one of the tracking systems for charged particles in the ATLAS detector. It consists of 4088 silicon strip sensor modules.During Run 2 (2015–2018) the Large Hadron Collider delivered an integrated luminosity of 156 fb -1 to the ATLAS experiment at a centre-of-mass proton-proton collision energy of 13 TeV. The instantaneous luminosity and pile-up conditions were far in excess of those assumed in the original design of the SCT detector.Due to improvements to the data acquisition system, the SCT operated stably throughout Run 2.It was available for 99.9% of the integrated luminosity and achieved a data-quality efficiency of 99.85%.Detailed studies have been made of the leakage current in SCT modules and the evolution of the full depletion voltage, which are used to study the impact of radiation damage to the modules.