Séminaire // ANNULE //: Recent results from the ALICE experiment at CERN

par Dr Michele FLORIS (CERN)

vendredi 15 avr. 2011, 14:30 → 15:30 Europe/Paris

Salle 9109 (Dept Phys.)

ALICE is the LHC experiment dedicated to the study of heavy-ion collisions. The detector features excellent tracking capabilities, low material budget and very good particle identification. These characteristics make it very well suited also for pp measurements, complementary to the other LHC experiments. The physics program at the LHC started in late 2009 with pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 900 GeV. The accelerator later delivered pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.36 TeV and sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. The heavy-ion program started in late 2010, with the first PbPb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 2.76 TeV. The energies reached in both colliding systems are the highest ever attained in a particle accelerator. In this talk we introduce the ALICE detector, we describe the strategy employed to remove machine-induced backgrounds from the data samples and review recent results. Inclusive pseudorapidity, multiplicity, and transverse momentum distributions, as well as distributions of identified particles in pp will be presented. The first results from the heavy-ion run will be discussed, with particular emphasis on multiplicity and flow measurements, and on the emerging picture of heavy ion collisions at the LHC. Finally, prospects for the near future will be outlined.