Development of a Micro Vertex Detector for the PANDA-Experiment at the FAIR Facility

Abstract

The AntiProton ANnihilations at DArmstadt - experiment, PANDA, is one of the main experiments of the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) which replaces and extends the existing GSI-facility at Darmstadt. The primary physics goals include precision spectroscopy of charmonium states, establishment of gluonic excitations, the study of modifications of meson properties in the nuclear medium, and precision gamma-ray spectroscopy of single and double hypernuclei. For many of these physics goals an identification of D-mesons via the detection of a secondary vertex with a decay length in the order of 100 mum is essential. Therefore, a special micro vertex detector (MVD) is foreseen which allows precise tracking of all charged particles. A hybrid pixel solution was chosen as a baseline concept for the PANDA micro vertex detector to accommodate the high radiation dose and the required time resolution. To clarify the requirements for the hybrid pixel detector a Geant4 based simulation was performed using a detector geometry optimized for low radiation length. Some simulation results, test results from prototype testing and the status of the development of the detector will be presented.