Muon Physics in ALICE: The MFT Upgrade Project

TL;DR

The ALICE experiment's MFT upgrade aims to significantly enhance muon measurements in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC, enabling new insights into quark-gluon plasma properties.

Contribution

This paper presents the design, motivations, and preliminary results of the MFT upgrade for ALICE, improving muon detection and opening new research avenues.

Findings

Enhanced measurement capabilities for prompt and displaced charmonia.

Access to new measurements of open heavy flavors.

Improved detection of low mass dimuons in Pb--Pb collisions.

Abstract

The ALICE experiment is dedicated to the study of the quark gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions at the CERN LHC. The Muon Forward Tracker (MFT) is under consideration by the ALICE experiment to be part of its program of detectors upgrade to be installed during the LHC Long Shutdown 2 (LS2) planned for 2018. Designed as a silicon pixel detector added in the Muon Spectrometer acceptance ($-4.0 < \eta < -2.5$) upstream of the hadron absorber, the MFT will allow a drastic improvement of the measurements that are presently done with the Muon Spectrometer and, in addition, will give access to new measurements that are not possible with the present Muon Spectrometer setup. Motivations and preliminary results are discussed here, concerning the measurement of prompt and displaced charmonia, open heavy flavors, and low mass dimuons in central Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.5$ TeV.