Research towards the PANDA Micro-Vertex-Detector

The Micro-Vertex-Detector of the PANDA experiment will be essential for the identification of open charm and instrumental in several central issues of the physics program. Detector R&D for the MVD addresses mechanical optimization of the structure in view of a minimum material budget, electronics design of the components and hardware development. The layout of the detector is accompanied by detailed Monte-Carlo studies using a CAD-based computer model of the MVD. Since the detector volume is rather compact, cooling is a crucial issue, as are the electrical services for the device. Since PANDA will operate with very high interaction rates of antiprotons with protons as well as heavy targets, the radiation load on all elements has to be studied in detail. PANDA will not have a conventional low-level trigger design. Instead, all elements will be read out and feature extraction will be subsequently employed to analyze the data. This makes the development of new readout architectures for Si detectors inevitable. The status of the MVD detector is summarized and examples of the developments achieved, those under way and envisaged in the future are given.