Smart high-precision pixel detectors for particle physics at high luminosity

Abstract

Pixel vertex detectors are under consideration for experiments at the CERN LHC collider and elsewhere. Candidate materials include silicon, gallium arsenide and CVD diamond. The largest implementations may contain more than one square meter of active area, with more than 10 8 individually-addressable elements. Their very low intrinsic noise allows pixel detectors to be thinner than microstrips, with correspondingly higher radiation tolerance. At high luminosity, the pattern recognition capability of their true space-point information can be essential for vertexing in the high track multiplicity environment close to the collider beams. Advanced data-driven (“smart”) readout architectures - implemented in radiation-hard processing technologies - will read only the hit pixels in triggered events, with analog charge interpolation among neighboring pixels for very high spatial resolution. The recent development, present status and future implementation of pixel detectors are discussed.