Development of hybrid photon detectors with integrated silicon pixel readout for the RICH counters of LHCb

We report on the ongoing work towards a hybrid photon detector with integrated silicon pixel readout for the ring imaging Cherenkov detectors of the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The photon detector is based on a cross-focussed image intensifier tube geometry where the image is de-magnified by a factor of 4. The anode consists of a silicon pixel array, bump-bonded to a fast, binary readout chip with matching pixel electronics. The performance of a half-scale prototype is presented, together with the developments and tests of a full-scale tube with large active area. Specific requirements for pixel front-end and readout electronics in LHCb are outlined, and recent results obtained from pixel chips applicable to hybrid photon detector design are summarized.