The silicon vertex locator for the LHCb upgrade

The upgrade of the LHCb experiment, planned for 2018, will transform the entire readout to a triggerless system being read out at 40 MHz. The upgraded silicon vertex detector (VELO) must be light weight, radiation hard, and compatible with LHC vacuum requirements. It must be capable of fast pattern recognition, fast track reconstruction and high precision vertexing. This challenge is being met with a new VELO design based on hybrid pixel detectors positioned to within 5 mm of the LHC colliding beams. The detector will be shielded from the beam by a ~ 300 μ m thick aluminium foil. Evaporative CO2 coolant circulating in micro-channels embedded in a thin silicon substrate will be used for cooling.