The New Inner Tracking System For The Alice Upgrade At The Lhc

ALICE, the CERN LHC experiment devoted to the study of the QGP (Quark-Gluon Plasma) properties, will undergo a comprehensive upgrade during the second long shutdown of the LHC (in 2019-2020) to enhance the capability for high precision measurements of rare processes at low transverse momenta (p(T)). One of the key elements of the upgrade strategy is the novel, high-resolution, ultra-light Inner Tracking System (ITS) consisting of seven concentric layers of Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) covering a total active area of 10 m(2) segmented in 12.5 Gpixels. This paper presents an overview of the detector components, the most relevant characterisation results and the status of the detector construction.