Technical design report for the upgrade of the ALICE inner tracking system

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is studying the physics of strongly interacting matter, and in particular the properties of the Quark–Gluon Plasma (QGP), using proton–proton, proton–nucleus and nucleus–nucleus collisions at the CERN LHC (Large Hadron Collider). The ALICE Collaboration is preparing a major upgrade of the experimental apparatus, planned for installation in the second long LHC shutdown in the years 2018–2019. A key element of the ALICE upgrade is the construction of a new, ultra-light, high- resolution Inner Tracking System (ITS) based on monolithic CMOS pixel detectors. The primary focus of the ITS upgrade is on improving the performance for detection of heavy-flavour…