Conceptual design of the Muon Forward Tracker of the ALICE experiment

ALICE is the experiment dedicated to the study of the quark gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions at the CERN LHC. Improvements of the ALICE detectors are envisaged for the upgrade of HL-LHC in year 2018. In particular, in forward region, the Muon Forward Tracker (MFT) is a proposal of a new tracking device, to be added in complement with the current Muon Spectrometer. The main motivations are to overcome the intrinsic limitations of the present Muon Spectrometer, almost blind to the details of the vertex region because of the Hadronic Absorber thickness, and to perform new measurements of general interest for the whole ALICE physics. This paper presents the conceptual design of the MFT [1], focusing particularly on the chosen technology for the tracker. After a short presentation of the pixel sensor architecture, a summary of the in-lab tests results of the first sensor prototype are presented. Concept for the data acquisition system is also discussed. Finally, preliminary thermal simulations and support structure concept is reported.