Experimental studies of radiation damage of silicon detectors. Internal report

摘要

New particle physics experiments are correlated with high luminosity and/or high energy. The new generation of colliding beam machines which will be constructed will make an extrapolation of a factor of 100 in the center of mass energy and of 1000 in luminosity beyond present accelerators. The scientific community hopes that very exciting physics results could be achieved this way, from the solution to the problem of electroweak symmetry breaking to the possible discovery of new, unpredicted phenomena. The particles which compose the radiation field are: electrons, pions, neutrons, protons and photons. It has become evident that the problem of the radiation resistance of detectors in this severe environment is a crucial one. This situation is complicated more by the fact that detectors must work all the run time of the machine, and better all the time of the experiment, without replacement (part or whole). So, studies related to the investigation of the radiation hardness of all detector parts, are developing. The studies are in part material and device characterization after irradiation, and in part technological developments, made in order to find harder, cheaper technologies, for larger surfaces. Semiconductor detectors have proven to be a good choice for vertex and calorimeter. Both fixed target machines and colliders had utilized in the past silicon junction detectors as the whole or part of the detection system. Precision beam hodoscopes and sophisticated trigger devices with silicon are equally used. The associated electronics in located near the detectors, and is subjected to the same radiation fields. Studies of material and device radiation hardness are developing in parallel. Here the authors present results on the radiation hardness of silicon, both as a bulk material and as detectors, to neutron irradiation at high fluences.