The ATLAS silicon strip detectors

The innermost layers of all four LHC detectors are made of silicon. This piece comes from the ATLAS detector where its job is to record the paths of the particles close to the collision. Here, hundreds of particles spray outwards and the silicon detectors must identify the exact points from which the particles originate and make an accurate measurement of the curvature of every particle track. Inside ATLAS, the first layer is made of 80 million silicon pixels, each smaller than a grain of sand. Surrounding the pixels are six million silicon strips, each about the thickness of a hair. The object on display here contains 1536 such silicon strips. Together, the layers of tracking detectors are like a giant 92 mega pixel camera taking a photo 40 million times every second.