Micromegas detectors for the upgrade of the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer

We will present the status and the plans of the micromegas detector project for the upgrade of the ATLAS muon system in the next long LHC shutdown in 2018. The project consists of the construction of 1200 m2 of micromegas detectors, with single detector elements of 2–3 m2 area each, and their instrumentation with readout electronics based on a novel chip developed for this purpose. The detector comprises 2M readout channels and delivers track segments for triggering and high precision off-line track reconstruction. The detector elements will be assembled with high precision into 128 four-layer modules, two of which each form a measurement station. We will present the detector concept and our ideas and steps towards the construction of the modules which will take place in several production sites. In addition we will report on the realization of a first pre-series four-layer module to be installed in ATLAS in 2014.