Use of plastic optical fibers for charged particle tracking in high energy physics

A large tracking detector consisting of scintillating plastic optical fibers has been chosen by the DO collaboration as a part of a planned upgrade at the Fermilab Tevatron. The tracker will utilize a state of the art photodetector known as the Visible Light Photon Counter. The benefits of fiber tracking in high energy physics will be presented along with recent progress in several key areas, including: optimization of scintillating dyes and light yields, fiber construction, fiber ribbon manufacture and placement, optical transmission and photodetection. The current status of the D0 development effort will be outlined, including results from the characterization of 5,000 channels of VLPC. Finally, results from simulations of expected detector performance will be shown and discussed