ALICE-USA Barrel Tracking
Upgrade Project
T.M.Cormier, University of Tennessee, Knoxville (PI/PD)
K. Read, University of Tennessee, Knoxville (co-PI)
S. Sorensen, University of Tennessee, Knoxville (co-PI)
The ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) is a dedicated facility for the study of the Quark-Gluon Plasma using
Pb-Pb Heavy Ion Collisions at center of mass energies of up to 5 TeV per
nucleon. Throughout the first run of
the LHC, which concluded in 2012, the ALICE experiment revealed properties of
the Quark Gluon Plasma, which were in many ways a natural extension of those
seen at RHIC to the higher densities and temperatures at the LHC. Many observables, however, particularly those
at very high PT or heavy quark masses appear to behave tantalizingly
different at the LHC. To explore this high PT, heavy
quark sector further, we are undertaking an upgrade of the ALICE detector
targeted at the high luminosity beams that will become available in LHC Run-3,
commencing in 2020. This upgrade will increase the maximum readout rate of the
ALICE Detector x10 for un-triggered, minimum bias, events and x100 for
triggered (e.g. high PT) events to accommodate the heavy ion
interaction rates expected in LHC Run-3 and will simultaneously provide greatly
improved vertexing capability. Together, these improvements to ALICE enable
measurements of new observables in LHC heavy ion and pp collisions that open up
qualitatively new opportunities for the study of the Quark-Gluon Plasma and
other fundamental QCD phenomena. This upgrade is carried out by the ALICE-USA
Collaboration including Nuclear Physics Groups at the University of California,
Berkeley; University of Houston; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab; Oak Ridge
National Lab; University of Texas, Austin; and Yale University. The project is under the leadership of the
University of Tennessee Knoxville group.