Novel silicon detectors in ALICE at the LHC: The ITS3 and ALICE 3 upgrades

¹ European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN)
² Technical University Munich

^* e-mail: isabella.sanna@cern.ch

Published online: 26 June 2024

Abstract

The ALICE experiment is preparing for the ITS3 upgrade, which is set to take place during the LHC Long Shutdown 3. The aim of this upgrade is to replace the three innermost tracking layers with truly cylindrical wafer-scale Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS). By adopting this innovative technology, ALICE will further reduce the material budget and the distance from the interaction point, thus significantly improving its tracking and vertexing capabilities. The R&D program for ITS3 includes several advancements, such as operability of bent MAPS, validation of the 65 nm CMOS technology, and employment of the stitching process to produce wafer-scale sensors. In addition to the ITS3 upgrade, ALICE is designing a completely new apparatus, ALICE 3, planned for LHC Runs 5 and 6. The detector consists of a large MAPS-based tracking system covering eight units of pseudorapidity, complemented by multiple systems for particle identification, including silicon time-of-flight layers, a ring-imaging Cherenkov detector, a muon identification system, and an electromagnetic calorimeter. The vertex detector is based on an evolution of the ITS3 concept aiming at a track pointing resolution of better than 10 μm for tranverse momenta above 200 MeV/c through the integration of the tracking layers in a retractable structure inside the beam pipe. In this proceeding the detector concept of these upgrades is described, together with their physics motivations and R&D status and achievements.