Radiation hard silicon microstrip detectors for use in ATLAS at CERN

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) will accelerate protons in colliding beams to a center of mass energy of 14 TeV at very high luminosities. The ATLAS detector is being built to explore the physics in this unprecedented energy range. Tracking of charged particles in high-energy physics (HEP) experiments requires a high spatial resolution and fast signal readout, all with as little material as possible. Silicon microstrip detectors meet these requirements well and have been chosen for the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) which is part of the inner tracking system of ATLAS and has a total area of 61 m2. During the 10 years of operation at LHC, the total fluence received by the detectors is sufficiently large that they will suffer a severe degradation from radiation induced damage. The damage affects both the physics performance of the detectors as well as their operability and a great challenge has been to develop radiation hard detectors for this environment. An extensive irradiation programme has been carried out where detectors of various designs, including defect engineering by oxygen enriched silicon, have been irradiated to the expected fluence. A subsequent thermal annealing period is included to account for a realistic annual maintenance schedule at room temperature, during which the radiation induced defects alter the detector properties significantly. This thesis presents work that has been carried out in the Bergen ATLAS group with results both from the irradiation programme and from detector testing during the module production. (Author)