Development and test of the CO₂ evaporative cooling system for the LHCb UT Tracker Upgrade

The LHCb upgrade requires a new silicon strip tracker detector placed between the vertex locator and the magnet. The new detector will have improved performance in charged particle tracking and triggering. The front-end electronics will be in the active area, close to the sensors: this is a key feature driving the mechanical and cooling detector design, together with the requirement to make the sensors work below −5°C, to withstand radiation damage. The new design exploits a cooling system based on CO₂ evaporation at temperatures around −25°C. The support structure for the sensor modules is a lightweight carbon fiber mechanical structure embedding a cooling pipe, designed to pass underneath the read-out ASICs, which are the main thermal power sources to be cooled down. Here a description of the detector will be given, with a main focus on the cooling system and on the progress done to its qualification.