Studies for the LHCb SciFi tracker. Development of modules from scintillating fibres and tests of their radiation hardness

The LHCb detector will see a major upgrade in the LHC long shutdown 2, which is planned for 2019/20. Among others, the tracking stations, currently realised as silicon strip and drift tube detectors, will be replaced by the Scintillating Fibre (SciFi) Tracker. The SciFi Tracker is based on scintillating fibres with a diameter of 250 μm, read out by multichannel silicon photomultipliers. The two major challenges related to the fibres are the radiation damage of the light guidance and the production of precise multi-layer fibre mats. This thesis presents radiation hardness studies performed with protons at the tandem accelerator at Forschungszentrum Garching and in situ in the LHCb cavern. The obtained results are combined with additional data of the LHCb SciFi group and two different wavelength dependent models of the radiation induced attenuation are determined. These are used to simulate the relative light yield, for both models it drops to 83% on average at the end of the nominal lifetime of the SciFi Tracker. A machine and techniques to produce multi-layer fibre mats were developed and optimised. Procedures for the production and alignment are described. These are implemented in the serial production of the SciFi modules which will start in the second quarter 2016.