Quark Matter 2005 Conference   Quark Matter 2005 Conference


A Silicon Vertex Tracker for PHENIX

Dr. Atsushi Taketani

Collaboration: PHENIX

Abstract:

The PHENIX experiment at RHIC will be upgraded with a Silicon Vertex Tracker (VTX). This new device will greatly enhance the capabilities of PHENIX to investigate hot and dense nuclear matter formed in heavy ion collisions at RHIC as well as significantly improve the measurements of the proton spin structure in polarized proton-proton collisions. The vertex tracker will allow the direct measurement of heavy quark production through the identification of displaced decay vertices. The VTX is composed of a four layer barrel covering the full azimuth at mid-rapidity and two forward endcaps shadowing the PHENIX Forward Spectrometer arms. The VTX central barrel consists of two silicon pixel layers followed by two silicon strip layers. The endcaps are populated with four layers of mini-strip sensors. This presentation will review the physics capabilities of the PHENIX VTX, describe the detector technology and summarize the status of both the hardware and software.


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