Micromegas Front End Electronics for the ATLAS New Small Wheel Upgrade

In order to increase the discovery reach of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the nominal luminosity will be increased by a factor of 5-7 for the high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). An important upgrade of the ATLAS experiment, one of the four major experiments at the LHC, is the New Small Wheel (NSW) project, which will preserve the excellent performance of the muon spectrometer at the HL-LHC luminosity. Two new detector technologies, Micromegas detectors and small-strip Thin Gap Chambers will be used in the NSW. Front end electronics for the Micromegas detectors are being developed and tested. The front end electronics use several custom ASICs in order to survive the high radiation environment. The physics motivation for the NSW will discussed. A short technical description of the front end boards will be given. Results on the performance of the front end boards collected on test and production Micromegas detectors will be presented.