The upgrade and performance of the LHCb RICH detector

The LHCb experiment at CERN studies b and c hadrons decays in the forward region. Many physics analyses in LHCb rely on the Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detector for the charged-hadron identification in a wide momentum range. The RICH detector is currently undergoing a substantial upgrade: an improved optics and multi-anode photomultipliers, coupled with new readout electronics, will deal with the expected five-fold increase of luminosity in RUN 3, starting in 2021. Upgrade activities will be presented, including hardware characterization and expected improvements in the detector performance.