Development of tracking software and detector design studies for the proposed FASER2 experiment at the LHC

FASER-2 is a proposed upgrade to the FASER experiment, and could be hosted in the proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF) located 620m to the west of the ATLAS interaction point, in the far-forward region of the LHC collisions. The experiment is designed to have sensitivity to long-lived particles (LLPs) produced by rare meson decays that are candidates for light dark matter. The proposed upgrade involves a significantly enlarged volume compared to FASER, resulting in an increase in reach for various BSM signals of several orders of magnitude and allows sensitivity to models that were previously out of reach, such as Dark Higgs and Heavy Neutral Leptons. This report will present the development of a tracking software for the FASER-2 experiment using the A Common Tracking Software (ACTS) toolkit to aid in track reconstruction, accurate mass and pointing reconstruction of charged particles. The developed tracking software will be used to compare various FASER-2 layouts and tracker technologies, thereby contributing to the design studies of the FASER-2 experiment.