Momentum resolution improvement technique for silicon tracking detectors using dE/dx

A technique for improving the momentum resolution for low momentum charged particles in few layer silicon based trackers is presented. The particle momenta are determined from the measured Landau dE/dx distribution and the Bethe–Bloch formula in the 1/β2 region. It is shown that a factor of two improvement of the momentum determination is achieved as compared to standard track fitting methods. This improvement is important in large scale heavy ion experiments which cover the low transverse momentum spectra using stand-alone silicon tracking devices with a few planes like the ones used in STAR at RHIC and ALICE at LHC.