Future ALICE upgrades for Run 4 and Beyond

TL;DR

The paper discusses upcoming upgrades to the ALICE detector, including new tracking layers, a forward calorimeter, and the proposed ALICE 3, aiming to enhance measurements of heavy-flavour hadrons, dielectrons, and gluon distributions in future runs.

Contribution

It introduces the design and R&D progress of the ALICE upgrades for Run 4 and beyond, including innovative detector technologies and the conceptual framework for ALICE 3.

Findings

Development of cylindrical tracking layers for improved measurements.

Progress in R&D for the Forward Calorimeter (FoCal).

Design concepts and requirements for the ALICE 3 detector.

Abstract

For Run 4, ALICE is pioneering the construction of truly cylindrical tracking layers, which will improve the measurements of heavy-flavour hadrons and dielectrons. In addition, a Forward Calorimeter (FoCal) for the measurement of direct photons is being developed to access the gluon distributions of nucleons and nuclei at low $x$. For Run 5 and beyond, ALICE 3 is proposed. It combines a unique high-resolution vertex detector with a silicon pixel tracker and modern particle identification solutions over a large acceptance. This will permit heavy-flavour and dielectron measurements with unprecedented precision to access fundamental properties and dynamics of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). We will discuss the upgrade plans, report on R\&D results for ITS3 and FoCal, and present the requirements and concepts for ALICE 3.