The Silicon Vertex Detector of the Belle II Experiment

The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB collider of the KEK laboratory (Tsukuba, Japan) aims to accumulate 50 ab^-1 of electron-positron collision data at the unprecedented instantaneous luminosity of 8 x 10³⁵ cm^-2 s^-1, about 40 times larger than the instantaneous luminosity reached by previous KEKB machine. The Belle II vertex detector plays a crucial role in the rich Belle II physics program, especially for time-dependent measurements. It consists of two layers of DEPFET-based pixels (PXD) and four layers of double sided silicon strips detectors (SVD).

The assembly of the SVD started in 2015 in five different assembly sites, and culminated with the installation of the full vertex detector in November 2018, followed by the start of physics runs in March 2019. Since then, the Belle II experiment accumulated 50 fb^-1 of data. The path from the assembly to data taking, with a view on the first year of operational experience and performance of the SVD will be presented.