Experience with a 30 cm2 silicon pixel plane in CERN experiment WA97

Abstract A multi-chip, large area hybrid silicon pixel detector has been integrated in a particle physics experiment for the first time. The plane had 72K 75 μ m × 500 μ m sensor elements, covering a total area of about 30 cm 2 . It was constructed and characterized in a collaboration between heavy-ion experiment WA97 and R&D project RD19. Several such planes will be incorporated in a hyperon telescope, in order to improve tracking in the high multiplicity environment of central lead-lead collisions at the SPS. Results on the characterization of this detector in a proton beam at the Omega spectrometer at CERN are presented and discussed.