The Belle II detector in Japan is getting a new pixel detector. After long preparations and an exciting journey in the passenger cabin of an aircraft, the new pixel detector PXD2 has now arrived safely in Japan and can replace its not fully instrumented predecessor.
A powerful successor for the innermost detector
At the moment, the SuperKEKB accelerator in Japan is at a standstill. One of the main reasons for this is the planned installation of the new two-layer Belle II Pixel Vertex Detector (PXD2). The greatly improved small detector, which is responsible for measuring the shortest-lived particle decays in the Belle II detector, is to replace the current PXD1. This is necessary in view of future data-taking periods with higher luminosity and the associated greater hit density on the sensors, which are only a few millimetres away from the beam axis, in order to avoid performance losses for physics analyses.
Much preparation for the exchange
The PXD2, like its predecessor, was built at the German institutes of the collaboration. After many months of intensive preparation at the various German institutes, the time had finally come: the two half-shells of the new PXD2 could be sent on the long journey to Japan. The small, sensitive detector consists of wafer-thin and easily breakable silicon wafers that must be protected as best as possible against shocks. Transporting this unique and irreplaceable instrument was therefore a very special challenge.
Read the original press release (German only).