Silicon detectors for particle tracking at future high-energy physics experiments

Abstract

Silicon tracking detectors are a central component of all present and planned high-energy physics experiments. For example, all experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are equipped with silicon pixel and strip detectors. In future colliders, silicon detectors are planned to be used as tracking devices also at the ten times higher luminosity upgrade of the LHC (the so-called SuperLHC or SLHC), and at the foreseen International Linear Collider (ILC). The related RD in high-multiplicity environments, where an excellent two track separation is essential, a thinner detector is also superior. This thesis presents several contributions to the RD moreover, they can eventually be thinned down to a thickness of a few tens of ¹m. In this work, an experimental setup has been built for the test of a large size prototype, featuring 1 million pixels distributed on an area of 3.5 cm2. Tests have been performed both with a radioactive source, for the calibration of the detector charge-to-voltage conversion gain, and with electron beams in order to study the detector tracking capabilities. The results from experimental tests are also compared with simulations performed with advanced simulation packages.