The CDF II Level 1 Track Trigger Upgrade

Abstract

The CDF II detector uses dedicated hardware to identify charged tracks that are used in an important class of Level 1 trigger decisions. Until now, this hardware identified track segments based on patterns of hits on only the axial sense wires in the tracking chamber and determined the transverse momentum of track candidates from patterns of track segments. This identification is efficient but produces trigger rates that grow rapidly with increasing instantaneous luminosity. High trigger rates are a consequence of the large numbers of low momentum tracks produced in inelastic pp macr collisions which generate overlapping patterns of hits that match those expected for high-momentum tracks. A recently completed upgrade to the Level 1 track trigger system makes use of information from stereo wires in the tracking chamber to reduce the rate of false triggers while maintaining high efficiency for real high momentum particles. We describe the new electronics used to instrument the additional sense wires, identify track segments and correlate these with the track candidates found by the original track trigger system. The performance of this system is characterized in terms of the efficiency for identifying charged particles and the improved rejection of axial track candidates that do not correspond to real particles.