Advances in Tracking Detectors

Abstract

Tracking detectors are of vital importance for most experiments in high-energy and nuclear physics. They are used to determine the charge, momentum, and energy of traversing particles and to allow quark-flavor identification through the reconstruction of secondary vertices. Gaseous and semiconductor detectors are the two main types of tracking detectors; other, more exotic ones are fiber or transition radiation tracking devices. These detectors originated with cloud and bubble chambers in the 1950s and wire chambers in the 1970s, which dominated the field until the 1980s, when silicon sensors were developed. Today, silicon strip and pixel sensors, time-projection chambers, gas electron multipliers, and micromegas define the field. More advanced detector types are described in this review, with an emphasis on application examples and future plans.