ALICE Upgrades: Plans and Potentials

Abstract

The ALICE collaboration consolidated and completed the installation of current detectors during LS1 with the aim to accumulate 1 nb$^{-1}$ of Pb-Pb collisions during Run 2 corresponding to about 10 times the Run 1 integrated luminosity. In parallel, the ALICE experiment has a rich detector upgrade programme scheduled during the second LHC long shutdown (LS2, 2018-2019) in order to fully exploit the LHC Runs 3 and 4. The main objectives of this programme are: improving the tracking precision and enabling the read-out of all Pb-Pb interactions at a rate of up to 50 kHz, with the goal to record an integrated luminosity of 10 nb$^{-1}$ after LS2 in minimum-bias trigger mode. This sample would represent an increase by a factor of one hundred with respect to the minimum-bias sample expected during Run 2. The implementation of this upgrade programme, foreseen in LS2, includes: a new low-material Inner Tracking System at central rapidity with a forward rapidity extension to add vertexing capabilities to the current Muon Spectrometer; the replacement of the Time Projection Chamber wire chambers with gas electron multiplier readout; a new readout electronics for most of the detectors and an updated trigger system; a new set of forward trigger detectors and a new integrated online-offline system. High-precision measurements of open heavy-flavour, quarkonia and low-mass dilepton production are the major physics goals of the ALICE upgrade programme. Thanks to the new inner tracking system, the measurements of the nuclear modification factor and elliptic flow of several species of charm and beauty mesons and baryons will be extended to zero or close to zero $p_T$. At forward rapidity, the new silicon based tracker (MFT) will allow prompt J/$\psi$ to be separated from displaced J/$\psi$ from B decays down to zero $p_T$ as well as single muons to be separated from charm and beauty hadron decays.