Development of silicon pixels for strangeness detection in nucleus‐nucleus collisions

Silicon microdetectors and in particular the novel silicon pixel detectors open up the way for a comprehensive study of strangeness detection in nucleus‐nucleus collisions. We outline the philosophy behind this approach, describe an application in the pixel‐based heavy‐ion experiment WA97, and give some preliminary results on the performance of four silicon pixels planes in the 1994 Pb beam run of WA97. We conclude with an outlook on some possible future applications of silicon pixels.