Design and Performance of the ALICE Muon Trigger System

The Forward Muon Spectrometer is one of the main components of ALICE, the dedicated heavy-ion experiment at the LHC. Its main goal is to measure heavy quarkonia (J/psi and gamma families) production in their mu(+)mu(-) decay channel. The muon trigger has to match the maximum trigger rate of about 1 kHz which can be handled by the DAQ. Therefore an event selection is performed by applying a suitable p(t) cut on each muon of the pair. The trigger system is based on Resistive Plate Chambers. The experimental conditions, the trigger architecture, its principle and its performance predicted by simulation axe presented.