Radiation damage to silicon detectors

A summary of recent progress in understanding the fundamental causes of bulk damage in high resistivity silicon detectors is given. A model based on deep acceptor states in the material appears to explain most of the experimental results. Candidates for the traps have been tentatively identified as vacancy-oxygen complexes with the aid of numerical simulations. The concentration of oxygen and carbon in the silicon is important in influencing the concentration of deep traps and may allow the possibility of improving the hardness of detectors.