Upgrade of the Inner Tracking System Conceptual Design Report

The present document addresses the question of how to improve the ALICE performance for heavy-flavour detection. It will be shown that it is possible to built a new silicon tracker with greatly improved features in terms of determination of the distance of closest approach (dca) to the primary vertex, standalone tracking efficiency at low pt , momentum resolution and readout rate capabilities. Such a new silicon tracker will allow ALICE to measure charm and beauty production in Pb-Pb collisions with sufficient statistical accuracy down to very low transverse momentum, measure charm baryons and perform precise measurements of beauty production. More in general the proposed upgrade is an important part of the ALICE upgrade conceived to deal with Pb–Pb collisions at interaction rates of up to 50 kHz.