Köln 2025 – scientific programme
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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 51: Instrumentation XI
HK 51.2: Talk
Thursday, March 13, 2025, 16:15–16:30, SR Exp1A Chemie
Front-end pixel grouping for the ALICE 3 Outer Tracker — •Johannes Hensler for the ALICE Germany collaboration — Physikalisches Institut, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
The ALICE collaboration is advancing plans for a novel detector with outstanding pointing resolution, excellent tracking, and particle identification over a large pseudorapidity range using cutting-edge silicon detector technology. This detector, called ALICE 3, is intended to replace the current experimental setup and start operation in 2036.
Central to ALICE 3 is a fully silicon-based monolithic active pixel sensor (MAPS) tracking detector built using a 65 nm technology node. The tracking system includes a Vertex Detector, Middle Layers, and an Outer Tracker, covering a total of 60 m2 of active sensor area.
This large-area tracking device poses significant challenges in sensor design. Achieving the required intrinsic position resolution of 10 µm is essential for accurate pointing and momentum measurements. For the Outer Tracker, a pixel pitch of O(50 µm) was chosen to balance resolution, power, and channel counts. However, larger pixel pitches have been found to reduce efficiency, especially at pixel corners.
To address these challenges, the potential of grouping the response of multiple pixels is being explored. This work presents input capacitance measurements on the CE65 chiplet as a starting point, along with initial tests of pixel grouping implemented directly in the analog front-end.
Keywords: ALICE3, Outer Tracker, MAPS, pixel grouping