The CMS Silicon Strip Tracker: Overview and Status

With an active silicon area of about 200 square metres, the silicon strip tracker of the CMS experiment, one of the experiments currently under construction for the future Large Hadron Collider at CERN, will be by far the largest silicon tracker in the world. Efficient mass production and rigid quality control are crucial to finish the detector, comprising of more than 15000 silicon strip modules, in time with optimal quality. After excellent performance of substructures has been proven in various test beam experiments, integration of the active detector elements into the mechanical support structures as well as cabling and testing of these integrated structures has now started. In this article the CMS silicon strip tracker is described. Production, quality control and integration procedures are outlined and the detector status is reviewed. The detector performance in a recent test beam experiment is summarized.