Precision Flavour Physics at the HL-LHC: Towards a future LHCb VErtex LOcator in the High Luminosity era

When two proton bunches collide we get multiple proton collisions (Figure 1.a). Those collision points (red dots on the Figure 1.a) are what we call primary vertices or PV-s. From PV-s particles (black lines on Figure 1.a) fly out. If the outgoing particle is a B or D meson (blue lines on Figure 1.a) it will decay after a short time. Position of the decay is called a Secondary Vertex or SV. All of the vertices are measured by a silicon VErtex LOcator or VELO for short. Particle collision will produce a set of particles that will travel trough the detector. Particles that are charged will produce hits in the detector (Figure 1.b) but in reality the detector sees only the hits (Figure 1.c). The challenge is to determine what hits correspond to what vertex.