THE LHCb EXPERIMENT

The LHCb experiment is dedicated to performing a detailed study of CP symmetry violation and rare decays of B and D mesons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. In order to achieve these physics goals the LHCb spectrometer must provide excellent vertexing and tracking performance both off-line and on-line. The LHCb VELO (VErtex LOcator) is the silicon micro-strip detector which surrounds the collision point and hence is critical to these aims. During routine operation the VELO detector will be located 7 mm from the LHC beam.