Cornell University Unit Name

"LCFI Collaboration"

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The LCFI Collaboration is developing the sensors, electronic systems and mechanical support structures necessary for the construction of a high performance vertex detector at the ILC, and investigating the contribution such a vertex detector can make to the physics programme of any of the detector concepts currently being considered. The goal of LCFI is to produce and test full-scale sensors with the accompanying electronics, support and cooling systems necessary. The design must allow polar angle coverage in the range cos θ < 0.96 , readout or signal storage within 50 µs, and have a material budget of at most 0.1% X0 for normally incident particles, providing an impact parameter resolution of ≤ 5 µm for tracks with momentum as low as 1 GeV/c.

LCFI has demonstrated the operation of column parallel (CP) CCDs at high clock speeds (up to 25 MHz) and low clock clock voltages (1.9 V), and using both charge and voltage sensitive amplifiers on ASICs bump-bonded to the sensors with a 20 micron interconnect pitch. The near future will see the delivery and testing of a new generation of CPCCDs, including full-scale and high speed "busline-free" devices. Corresponding new ASICs with on-chip cluster finding and data reduction are already being tested.

Different sensor technologies are now being actively considered with the first test structures for Imaging Sensors with In-situ Storage (ISIS) soon to be tested. Within the next 2-3 years, far more advanced ISIS prototypes will be made, along with active pixel storage sensors and a further generation of CPCCDs.

Mechanical studies have already shown the limitations of ladders using unsupported silicon or thinned silicon on a beryllium substrate. Detailed study of designs using carbon fibre or ceramic foams are underway, with a decision on a preferred technology forseen by Summer 2007. LCFI is also beginning to study the integration of individual ladders into a complete detector design.

The Collaboration has an active physics programme, developing and using flavour tagging and heavy flavour charge identification tools. These investigations are being extended both to optimise the vertex detector design and to maximise the physics potential of the ILC. There is also work to make these tools available to the wider community.

The electronics design work is centred at Oxford and RAL, with Glasgow, Liverpool and Nijmegen being primarily involved with device testing. Mechanical and physics studies are carried out by the Bristol, Oxford and RAL groups.

The prototyping of different sensor technologies is limited by the funds available, the relatively slow start to storage sensor prototyping being designed to fit within financial constraints.

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Please address the following questions in your statement.

• What are the goals of this R&D project. How does this R&D project address the needs of one or more of the detector concepts?

• If there are multiple institutions participating in this project, please describe the distribution of responsibilities.

• Are there significant recent results?

• What are the plans for the near future(about 1 year)? What are the plans on a time scale of 2 to 3 years?

• Are there critical items that must be addressed before significant results can be obtained from this project?

• Is the support for this project sufficient? Are there significant improvements that could be made with additional support?