Performance of a silicon microstrip detector in a very high rate environment

A silicon microstrip detector (SSD) system for use in very high rate experiments has been designed for Experiment E771 at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The detector electronics were designed from the ground up using application-specific integrated circuit chip sets where commercial circuits were not suitable. The electronics for the SSD were designed to operate with interaction rates up to 10/sup 7/ interactions/s (beam rates of 2*10/sup 8/ protons/s). In addition to speed, the detector for the current run is very compact, with 10000 channels of active detector in a volume of 5 cm*5 cm*10 cm. The system will be expanded to 16000 channels in the next Fermilab fixed target run. The strip pitch ranges from 25 mu m in the center of the detector near the target to 100 mu m pitch at the most downstream, outer edge of the detector. The readout is a latch design with efficiencies of approximately 95% even in the presence of radiation damage and high leakage currents. The detector and associated amplifier electronics have been operated at 20 degrees C and are designed to operate at 8 degrees C. >