The STAR Heavy Flavor Tracker PXL detector readout electronics

International audienceThe Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) is a recently installed micro-vertex detector upgrade to the STAR experiment at RHIC, consisting of three subsystems with various technologies of silicon sensors arranged in 4 concentric cylinders. The two innermost layers of the HFT close to the beam pipe, the Pixel ('PXL') subsystem, employ CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor (MAPS) technology that integrate the sensor, front-end electronics, and zero-suppression circuitry in one silicon die. This paper presents selected characteristics of the PXL detector part of the HFT and the hardware, firmware and software associated with the readout system for this detector