The distribution of an electric field in p-n junctions of silicon edgeless detectors

Development of silicon edgeless detectors started in 2004 and was motivated by preparations for the total elastic and diffractive cross-section measurement (TOTEM) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. In the context of this experiment, it would be necessary to detect protons scattered at ultimately small angles with respect to the LHC proton beam, which brings about a limitation imposed on the maximum distance between the beam and the sensitive region of the detector. In order to solve this problem, a new type of silicon detector (edgeless detectors) was developed; these detectors have the structure, which controls the distribution of the current near the edge of the p-n junction. In this paper we report the results of studying the distribution of the potential and an electric field in the region of the cut edge in the silicon edgeless detectors; the models, which account for the obtained results, as well as their consistency with current-voltage characteristics of silicon edgeless detectors developed for the TOTEM experiment, are discussed.