Speaker
Mr
Jan Buytaert
(CERN)
Description
The LHCb experiment plans to upgrade the entire detector and increase its running luminosity by a factor 10, by 2015/2016. This will require a full scale replacement of the front end electronics, to enable all detector information to be read out at 40 MHz and combined in the first level trigger executed on a PC-farm. In addition, the parts of the detector which suffer from radiation damage or excessive occupancy at high luminosity will be upgraded appropriately. One very important component of the upgrade is the replacement of the silicon vertex detector, possibly to a pixelated device. R&D is underway to exploit the Timepix pixel detector recently developed by the Medipix2 collaboration. This chip, in combination with a pixelated silicon detector is very suitable for such a high energy physics application. The small pixel size of 55 x 55 micron together with the time over threshold charge measurement is expected to give very precise spatial resolution which is well matched to the requirements of LHCb. Some adaptions to the chip design are required to match the 40MHz readout rate and move from 250 nm technology to smaller feature sizes.
The deep submicron technology has good potential to survive the radiation environment of up to 400 MRad, and future developments in 130 or 90 nm technology will provide increased radiation resistance and reduced power, which will be advantageous for the detector design. The potential to hybridise the design with the use of through silicon vias further enhances the efficiency and material budget of the detector. This talk will report on the planned developments, and on a number of testbeams scheduled for summer 2009 to establish the proof of principle of the use of Timepix for the high energy physics environment. Further electronics developments for the LHCb upgrade, such as alternative electronics chips, the planned use of FPGAs and the further extension of the Timepix for possible use in the RICH photon detector readouts will also be touched on.
Summary
The recently developed Timepix chip, from the family of Medipix chips, is a candidate for use as the front end chip for a silicon pixel vertex detector for the upgraded LHCb experiment. This talk will focus on the design modifications necessary for its use in the LHCb environment, as well as the proof of principle tests of the chip in combination with a pixelated silicon detector as a sensing device for minimum ionising particles in testbeams in summer 2009. The developments will be put in context with an overview of the general electronics developments for the LHCb upgrade.
Primary author
Mr
Jan Buytaert
(CERN)
