Oliver Pooth describes the silicon strip tracker of the CMS detector and discusses methods of quality control that are new to the field of particle detector physics. These methods were established to guarantee a uniform behaviour of all detector modules which were built and tested in various places worldwide.

In March 2007 the assembly of the Silicon Strip Tracker was completed at the Tracker Integration Facility at CERN. Nearly 15% of the detector was instrumented using cables, fiber optics, power supplies, and electronics intended for the operation at the LHC. A local chiller was used to circulate the coolant for low temperature operation. In order to understand the efficiency and alignment of the strip tracker modules, a cosmic ray trigger was implemented. From March through July 4.5 million triggers were recorded. This period, referred to as the Sector Test, provided practical experience with the operation of the Tracker, especially safety, data acquisition, power, and cooling systems. This paper describes the performance of the strip system during the Sector Test, which consisted of five distinct periods defined by the coolant temperature. Significant emphasis is placed on comparisons between the data and results from Monte Carlo studies.