The STAR silicon vertex tracker: a large area silicon drift detector

The Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC-Silicon Vertex Tracker (STAR-SVT) is a three barrel microvertex detector based upon silicon drift detector technology. As designed for the STAR-SVT, silicon drift detectors (SDDs) are capable of providing unambiguous two-dimensional hit position measurements with resol utions on the order of 20 mu m in each coordinate. Achievement of such reso lutions, particularly in the drift direction coordinate, depends upon certa in characteristics of silicon and drift detector geometry that are uniquely critical for silicon drift detectors hit measurements. Here we describe fe atures of the design of the STAR-SVT SDDs and the front-end electronics tha t are motivated by such characteristics. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.