THE LHCB RING IMAGING CHERENKOV DETECTORS

LHCb is an experiment for precise measurements of CP-violation in the decays of B mesons. Very good charged particle identification will be crucial for clean measurements of rare CP violating decays against an abundant background as well as for efficient kaon tagging. Thus LHCb employs two Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detectors to achieve K-π separation over a wide range of momenta. This paper presents the status of the LHCb RICH project. The requirements and the design of the detector are covered. The choices of the radiators and on R&D results for the photodetectors are reported. And the adopted solutions for the sub-components of the detector are discussed. Finally, the expected performance of the RICH detectors projected from full scale simulation based on R&D results is shown.