The Timepix telescope for charged particle tracking

The Timepix telescope has been developed as a general purpose tool for studying the performance of position sensitive charged particle detectors. Initiated as part of the infrastructure for the development of a new vertex detector for the LHCb experiment, the system was extended under the FP7 project AIDA to allow its use as an external facility by several groups within both the high energy and medical physics communities. Based at the CERN SPS, high track rates (up to 18 kHz), precise spatial resolution at the device under test (down to 1.6μm), and a flexible integration method have all been demonstrated. The telescope is constructed using the Timepix ASIC, a hybrid pixel chip with an active area of 14×14 mm2.