Radiation Hard Silicon Detectors For the SLHC

While the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will start taking data this year, scenarios for a machine upgrade to achieve a much higher luminosity are being developed. In the current planning, it is foreseen to incrase the luminosity of the LHC at CERN around 2016. As radiation damage scales with integrated luminosity, the particle physics experiments will need to be equipped with a new generation of radiation hard detectors. This article reports on the status of the R&D projects on radiation hard silicon strips detectors for particle physics, linked to the Large Hadron Collider Upgrader, Super-LHC (SLHC) of the ATLAS micro-stip detector. The primary focus of this report is on measuring the radiation hardness of the silicon materials and detectors under study. This involves designing silicon detectors, irradiating them to the SLHC radiation levels and studying their performance as particle detectors. The most promising silicon detector for the different radiation levels in the different regions of the ATLAS micro-strip detector will be presented. Important challenges related to engineering layout, powering, cooling and reading out a very large strip detector are presented. Ideas on possible schemes for the layout and support mechanics will be shown.