Operation and performance of the NA60 silicon pixel telescope

The NA60 experiment studies open charm and prompt dimuon production in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN SPS. The high multiplicity of charged tracks produced in heavy-ion collisions imposes the use of silicon pixel detectors to perform an efficient tracking. This paper describes the design and assembly of the pixel telescope and performance results from three detector planes operated in the high charged particle multiplicity conditions of Pb-Pb collisions.