4-Dimensional Tracking with Ultra-Fast Silicon Detectors

The evolution of particle detectors has always pushed the technological limit in order to provide enabling technologies to researchers in all fields of science. One archetypal example is the evolution of silicon detectors, from a system with a few channels 30 years ago, to the tens of millions of independent pixels currently used to track charged particles in all major particle physics experiments. Nowadays, silicon detectors are ubiquitous not only in research laboratories but in almost every high tech apparatus, from portable phones to hospitals. In this contribution, we present a new direction in the evolution of silicon detectors for charge particle tracking, namely the inclusion of very accurate timing information. This change in the present silicon detector paradigm is enabled by the inclusion of controlled, low gain in the detector response, therefore enhancing the detector output signal enough to make timing measurement possible. After providing a short overview of the advantage of this new technology, we present the necessary conditions that need to be met for the sensor and for the electronics in order to achieve 4-dimensional tracking. In the last section we present the experimental results, demonstrating the validity of our research path.