Component and System Level Studies of Radiation Damage Impact on Reflective Electroabsorption Modulators for Use in HL-LHC Data Transmission

We investigate the radiation hardness of Reflective Electroabsorption Modulators (REAMs) for fluence levels up to
$14 \times 10^{15}$
24 GeV p/cm
$^2$
to explore the possibility of utilising REAMs for data readout at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The high fluence levels used in the experiment and the online spectral measurements carried out provide significant insight into the radiation damage mechanism. The radiation limits of an architecture based on REAMs are established and compared to LHC and HL-LHC fluence levels.