The STAR Forward Rapidity Upgrade

The STAR experiment is planning to upgrade the forward rapidity region (2.5 < η < 4.5) to enable novel measurements in p+p, p+A and A+A collisions. The upgrade is motivated by the exploration of cold QCD physics in the very high and low regions of x. But it is specifically noted that the forward upgrade will also provide new detector capabilities at RHIC and STAR to explore the longitudinal structure of the initial state and the temperature dependent transport properties of matter in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The current design consists of a Calorimeter System (FCS) integrating the refurbished PHENIX sampling electromagnetic and a new hadronic calorimeter made of a sandwich iron scintillator plate sampling type. In addition to the FCS, a Forward Tracking System (FTS) is proposed. The FTS is require to discriminate the electric charge sign of hadrons in p+p and p+A collisions. In heavy ion collisions, it should be able to measure transverse momenta of charged particles between 0.2-2 GeV/c with 20-30% momentum resolution. The FTS combines 3 Silicon mini-strip disks and 4 Small-Strip Thin Gap Chamber (sTGC) wheels ala ATLAS. This talk will highlight the physics opportunities enabled by the forward upgrade.