Performance of the ALICE upgraded inner tracking system

Abstract

Major upgrades of the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) detector are underway and will be completed during the LHC long shutdown 2 in order to start operation in 2022 for LHC run 3. One key part of this upgrade is the new Inner Tracking System (ITS2), a full silicon-pixel detector constructed entirely with CMOS monolithic active pixel sensors. The upgraded ITS2 detector consists of three inner layers (50 μm thick sensors) and four outer layers (100 μm thick sensors) covering 10 m2 and containing 12.5 billion pixels with a pixel pitch of 27 μm × 29 μm. Compared with the silicon tracking system used during the LHC run 1 and run 2, the increased granularity, the very low material budget (0.35% X 0/layer in the inner barrel) as well as a smaller beam pipe radius, will result in a significant improvement of impact-parameter resolution and tracking efficiency. The assembly of the detector and services finished in December 2019, and the detector was fully installed in the ALICE experiment in May 2021. A comprehensive commissioning phase (on the surface) was completed in December 2020 to validate the detector performance. In this paper, an overview of the design and construction, as well as the performance of the ITS2 studied from the on-surface commissioning will be discussed in detail.