System simulations for the ALICE ITS detector upgrade

Abstract

Abstract

The ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC will feature several upgrades for Run 3, one of which is a new Inner Tracking System (ITS). The ITS upgrade is currently under development and commissioning, and will be installed during the ongoing long shutdown 2.

A number of factors will have an impact on the performance and readout efficiency of the ITS in run 3, and to that end, a simulation model of the readout logic in the ALPIDE pixel sensor chips for the ITS was developed, using the SystemC library for system level modeling in C++. This simulation model is three orders of magnitude faster than a normal HDL simulation of the chip and facilitates simulations of an increased number of events for a large portion of the detector.

In this paper, we present simulation results, where we have been able to quantify detector performance under different running conditions. The results are used for system configuration as well as for the ongoing development of the readout electronics.