Speaker
Description
The Forward Calorimeter (FoCal) is a proposed upgrade to the ALICE experiment at the LHC, designed to enable precision measurements of forward direct photons and neutral mesons, providing unique sensitivity to small-x QCD dynamics and gluon saturation effects. FoCal consists of a hybrid calorimetric system comprising an electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL), built as a stack of absorber plates interleaved with high-granularity pixel and pad sensor layers, followed by a hadronic calorimeter (HCAL). This highly granular design is essential for photon identification but also makes the detector particularly sensitive to high particle occupancies.
Achieving these physics goals requires an efficient online event selection capable of operating under the high interaction rates and large background conditions foreseen for Run 4. In this context, a major challenge is to avoid busy violations arising from the saturation of the pixel layers in high-multiplicity events, which could otherwise limit data taking efficiency. This poster presents ongoing simulation studies of online trigger strategies for the ALICE FoCal detector, aimed at mitigating such effects. These studies demonstrate that an optimized online trigger is essential for maximizing the FoCal physics reach and represent a key component of the detector’s overall design and integration into the ALICE experiment.
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