The ALICE Muon Tracking Chambers Upgrade

The ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC has a comprehensive upgrade programme which is being realized during the current second long shutdown of the LHC (2019-21). The motivation is to enhance the vertexing, tracking and readout capabilities. This is required to improve upon the present physics measurements, provide insights into new measurements and to fully exploit the scientific potential of the LHC with heavy ions at high luminosity. In Runs 3 and 4 from 2021, ALICE should be able to handle an interaction rate of 50 kHz and accumulate more than 10 nb^-1 of Pb-Pb collisions. To cope with these higher rates, the ALICE Muon Tracking Chambers would require an upgrade to the front-end electronics and the entire readout chain. The Muon Tracking Chambers (MCH), which are based on Cathode Pad Chambers, grouped in five stations, would themselves remain the same. The new front-end electronics is based on the SAMPA chip which was a common development for the Muon Tracking Chamber upgrade and the ALICE Time Projection Chamber upgrade. The readout chain consists of the Dual Sampa board on which the SAMPA chips are hosted, new front-end links, a new concentrator board called SOLAR and the Common Readout Unit which is common to several ALICE detectors in the upgrade scenario. In this presentation we will discuss the concept, features and performance of the MCH upgrade system.