Belle II: Finetuning of the Gated-Mode operation of the Pixel Vertex Detector

The Belle II experiment is located at the e+ e− collider SuperKEKB at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Japan. Due to the operation mode of the collider, which aims for a new world record in luminosity, the online injected particle bunches create a high noise environment for a certain time period. During this time a normal operation of the Pixel Vertex Detector (PXD) is not possible. However, the sensitive area of the PXD modules is based on the Depleted P-channel Field Effect Transistor (DEPFET) technology, which allows an operation mode in which the sensitive area can be shielded against the noise. The so called “Gated Mode” was already proven to work on prototype modules in the laboratory. The task is to optimize the “Gated Mode” and to prepare it for the operation in the running experiment.