Speaker
Description
High Luminosities planned at colliders of the next decades pose very severe requirements on vertex detector systems in terms of space resolution (tens of µm), radiation hardness (5 to 10 x 10^16 1 MeV neutron equivalent cm^-2 and some Grad) and data throughput (nxTbit/s). Expected event pile-up (more than 100) introduces the need to add high resolution time measurements (better than 100 ps) already at the single pixel level, for both real-time and off-line track reconstruction.
This demand pushes towards a new concept of vertex detector system, where all these features must operate at the same time.
The TIMESPOT project (TIME and SPace real-time Operating Tracker) is a R&D project, financed by INFN, whose strategy consists in facing this experimental challenge at system level. It consists of a research team gathering together state-of-the-art knowledges from different expertises and disciplines, in such a way to finalize existing technologies in the direction of an innovative tracking apparatus.
Many intersting results are already available as an outcome of the TIMESPOT activity. In sensor development, a 3D trench-based geometry has been chosen to be the best one concerning high time resolution applications and has been already submitted for fabrication. Activity on the design of dedicated front-end in 28-nm CMOS has led to the submission of a complete pixel read-out circuit, also integrating a TDC with 15 ps r.m.s. resolution. A special care is being dedicated to the development of real-time reconstruction algorithms for tracking. Pre-processing is based on the concept of so-called stubs or tracklets, which cam be pre-constructed and combined already at the front-end level.
In this paper, after a short overview of the project, we will illustrate some of TIMESPOT results obtained so far, with special emphasis on 3D trench sensors and front-end pixel electronics for high resolution timing.
