Commissioning of the CMS Forward Pixel Detector

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is scheduled for physics data taking in summer 2009 after the commissioning of high energy proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). At the core of the CMS all-silicon tracker is the silicon pixel detector, comprising three barrel layers and two pixel disks in the forward and backward regions, accounting for a total of 66 million channels. The pixel detector will provide high-resolution, 3D tracking points, essential for pattern recognition and precise vertexing, while being embedded in a hostile radiation environment. The end disks of the pixel detector, known as the Forward Pixel detector, has been assembled and tested at Fermilab, USA. It has 18 million pixel cells with dimension 100 x 150 μm2. The complete forward pixel detector was shipped to CERN in December 2007, where it underwent extensive system tests for commissioning prior to the installation. The pixel system was put in its final place inside the CMS following the installation and bake out of the LHC beam pipe in July 2008. It has been integrated with other sub-detectors in the readout since September 2008 and participated in the cosmic data taking. This report covers the strategy and results from commissioning of CMS forward pixel detector at CERN.