Simulation of the ATLAS New Small Wheel (NSW) System

The instantaneous luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will be increased up to a factor of five with respect to the present design value by undergoing an extensive upgrade program over the coming decade. In order to benefit from the expected high luminosity performance, the first station of the ATLAS muon end-cap Small Wheel system will need to be replaced by a New Small Wheel (NSW) detector during the second long LHC shutdown. The NSW will have to operate in a high background radiation region, while reconstructing muon tracks with high precision as well as furnishing information for the Level-1 trigger. The NSW simulation has been developed to model the actual response of the detector and its fast electronics. The simulation has been used to get a deep understanding of the trigger logic timing, the tracking-segment finding efficiency, track rate and track-pointing resolutions at the high background hit rate expected during the next phases of ATLAS at LHC. The results of these performance studies shows that the NSW trigger system is capable of working with good performance compared to the foreseen requirements.