The first 20 modules of a new scintillating fibre tracker have been delivered as early elements of the LHCb detector upgrade

The very first detector elements of the LHCb upgrade, early pieces of the scintillating fibre (SciFi) tracker, have arrived at CERN. Four boxes housing the first 20 of 128 modules were unloaded from trucks after an international tour: the scintillating fibres from Japan had been verified at CERN months ago before travelling to either Aachen, Dortmund, Lausanne or Moscow and then being assembled into modules in Heidelberg, Germany. Today they arrived at their final destination, CERN LHC Point 8.

In the coming weeks, the modules will be checked and reworked ahead of installation next spring. The 128 modules – containing 11 000 km of scintillating fibres – will make up the new SciFi tracker, which will replace the outer and inner trackers of the LHCb detector as part of the experiment’s major upgrade during Long Shutdown 2 (LS2).

Read more about the SciFi tracker here.