A slice-test demonstrator for the upgrade of the CMS Drift Tubes at High-Luminosity LHC

Drift Tubes (DT) detectors equip the CMS muon system barrel region serving both as offline tracking and triggering devices. Existing DT chambers will operate throughout High-Luminosity LHC, but, in order to withstand event rates and integrated doses far beyond the initial design specification, an upgrade of the current readout and trigger electronics is planned. In the upgraded system, time-to-digital converters will stream hits to new back-end boards that, beyond event matching, will perform online tracking of trigger segments exploiting the ultimate DT cell resolution. During the second LHC long shutdown, prototypes of the aforementioned electronics were installed in four DT chambers with the same azimuthal acceptance, instrumenting a demonstrator of the HL-LHC DT upgrade (DT slice-test). In this report, the motivation for such an upgrade will be highlighted, and the status of the DT slice-test operation, as well as its performance measured with cosmic muons, will be presented. Plans towards future developments of the demonstrator throughout the LHC Run-3 will also be discussed.