Cold silicon detectors for time-of-flight measurements

The advantages of using cold silicon detectors and cold electronic readout for time-of-flight measurements are presented. We show how the operation of silicon strip detectors and associated electronic readout at low temperature (−55°C) allows the reduction of several noise components with respect to the operation at room temperature. Measurements are reported for single silicon strip detectors displaying the compression of the rise time of charge pulse at low temperature. A noise reduction with temperature of a cold silicon detector was also measured in a testing device operated at −20°C. The measured width of the energy loss distribution of90Sr electrons traversing 300 μm silicon detector thickness improves by 10% for temperature variations from +20°C to −20°C