Our group carries out research of nuclear and particle physics with high-performance accelerators. In this page, the activities for Research and Development of Detector technology are presented.

Particle and Nuclear physics is to study fundamental phenomena once happening at the birth of the Universe by reproducing on earth with accelerators and observing and analyzing with detectors. Therefore, high sensitive experimental devices are essential as well as high performance accelerators and any innovation in those equipment will boost progress in physics.

In this research unit, advanced research and development of detector technology is carried out for particle and nuclear physics in collaboration with the KEK Detector Technology Project (DTP). Detector performance can be characterize in sensitivity and precision, where it is pursued to trace single elementary particle or photon in a precision of µm in space and pico second in time.

Among those R&D works, the recent remarkable progress is achieved in the development of new type pixel sensor using SOI (Silion-On-Insulator) technology.
Based on long history of semiconductor detector, recent LSI technology enables detectors to be segmented in extreme fine pitch. New SOI technology will realize a new genuine monolithic particle detector in which sensing part and signal processing electronics are integrated (Fig.2) .

Fig.2 Conceptual illustration of monolithic pixel sensor using SOI technology.
Thickness of the detector may be 50 to 500 µm depending on application.

The development of the world highest precision particle tracking system using SOI technology is in progress. With currently finest pitch detector of 8 µm pixel size, sub-micron spatial resolution has been confirmed in a high energy beam test conducted in the last fiscal year (Fig.3) This is the world first demonstration of precision better than 1 micron for electronic particle detector and foresees a new era of experimental physics.

Fig.3 Measured precision in the beam test. For reference, picture of virus is attached in the same scale.