Upgrade of the XFT trigger for CDF

Abstract

The CDF Detector at the Tevatron currently uses an online track trigger, known as the XFT, to identify charged tracks with P/sub T/ > 1.5 GeV/c which are then utilized in a number of ways to produce an event-by-event trigger decision. The tracks found by the XFT are utilized in approximately 80 percent of the physics triggers, including identification of high energy leptons (e, /spl mu/, /spl tau/), events containing heavy, flavor (c, b, t) and events with interesting topologies in for searches for new phenomena. The XFT is functioning well in the current system. As the Tevatron luminosity grows, occupancy in the tracking chamber increases from multiple proton-antiproton interactions. In the trigger, this additional occupancy will cause the tracking resolution to degrade and the rate of fake tracks to grow. We propose to upgrade the existing system to mitigate these effects and allow the CDF detector to operate at its fullest capacity at the highest possible luminosity.