Speaker
Dr
Luciano Ristori
(INFN, Pisa)
Description
The CDF Silicon Vertex Trigger (SVT) at the Fermilab Tevatron is a hardware based fast track finding device designed to detect secondary vertices from heavy flavor decays in real time. The SVT was conceived in 1990, was commissioned in 2001, is still operating as part of the CDF Level 2 trigger and has allowed CDF to collect a very large sample of hadronic decays of Charm and Beauty mesons and barions and perform important measurements otherwise impossible at a hadron collider. In this talk I will go over the history of the SVT, from conception to commissioning and successful operation. I will try to highlight the motivations, the sweat and tears, the hard choices we had to make and the risks we had to take to bring this very ambitious project to success, hoping this may help the younger generations of experimental physicists to learn what it takes to innovate and make an impact on science.
Author
Dr
Luciano Ristori
(INFN, Pisa)
