ALICE FoCal overview (2407.13058v1)

Abstract: The Forward Calorimeter (FoCal) is a new sub-detector in ALICE to be installed during the LHC Long Shutdown 3 for LHC Run 4. It consists of a highly-granular Si+W electromagnetic calorimeter combined with a conventional metal-scintillator hadronic calorimeter, covering a pseudorapidity interval of $3.2<\eta<5.8$. The FoCal is optimised to measure various physics quantities in the forward region, allowing exploration of the gluon density in hadronic matter down to $x\sim10^{-6}$, thus providing insights into non-linear QCD evolution at the LHC. These proceedings introduce the FoCal physics program and its corresponding performance. Additionally, the performance of the FoCal prototype will be presented.