Summary

This paper gave a very detailed overview of the methods used to simulate the response of a silicon detector to an ionizing particle incident in the dtector.

The description was very complete and began with a discussion of the energy loss of a charged particle in the silicon of the detector. It then went into the primary and secondary creation of electron hole pairs in the silicon. One thing of importance in this discussion was the energy of the particle and the fact that to create an e-h pair the particle has to have an energy equal to or greater than that of the band gap energy of silicon. In addition to being created by charged particles, these e-h paris can be created by photons which is a topic of discussion as well.

After discussion the means by which the initial charge is produced, it discusses the drifting of the electrons and holes to the different sides of the "capacitor" that is set up in the detector due to its construction. This is done by analyzing the electric field lines due to the strips that make separate capacitors against the opposite anode. After this, tthey discussed the manner in which this charge was transformed into a voltage signal and read out. The discussion of the electronics was very thorough and is a good place for one to begin to understand the associated electronics of a detector. In addition to the signal readout, associated noise was simulated and laid on top of the signal.

The simulation was tested for two different detecotr constructions that correspond to setups used in space physics and collider physics. The results were promising as they showed how position can be determined by the charge/signal distribution on different strips of the detector.

the entire paper is heavily laiden with equations which may be useful in writing a simulation of our own. However, the fineness of the details is not something that concerns our simulations but reading this paper helps to zoom in and see the finer aspects of a detector and give a step by step description of how a signal is produced given an incident particle.