E.J. Mannel 
Dept of Physics/Nevis Laboratories;  Columbia University  

The Central Silicon Vertex Detector for PHENIX  

The PHENIX collaboration has designed, constructed and installed a central silicon 
tracking detector (VTX) to reconstruct primary and secondary vertices at a Relativistic 
Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratories.  The main goal of the 
VTX is to make precise measurements of heavy quark production in A+A, p(d)+A and 
polarized p+p collisions which will help in understanding the properties of the strongly 
coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) formed in collisions at RHIC.   The VTX 
construction and installation was completed in 2010 and commissioning of the detector 
started during the 500 GeV polarized p+p running during the first part of RHIC Run-11 
which started in January 2011. In this talk I will present an overview of the of the physics 
capabilities of the VTX detector, a detailed description of the technology used in the 
VTX detector, and it's performance during the commissioning stage.