ALICE

Nov 22, 2022

After three years of interruption during LS2 (Long Shutdown 2), ALICE was on time for the first collisions after a very important rejuvenation started in 2012 of its electronics, readout and acquisition systems as well as the addition of new detectors. IRFU has long been heavily involved in the ALICE muon forward spectrometer, in particular the MCH (Muon Chambers) tracking chambers, and now also in the new MFT (Muon Forward Tracker) silicon pixel tracker.

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Jul 02, 2020

CERN's ALICE collaboration reports new results on a charming messenger of quarks and gluon plasma

The 2020 edition of the Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference (LHCP) took place from 25 to 30 May 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference, originally planned to be hosted in Paris, was held entirely online.

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CERN's ALICE collaboration reports new results on a charming messenger of quarks and gluon plasma

Jan 17, 2020

Bottomonium elliptic-flow no-show

A few microseconds after the Big Bang the Univers may have gone through a deconfined state of quarks and gluons, the Quark–Gluon Plasma (QGP). The QGP can be recreated in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. In particular at the LHC at CERN, the QGP behaves like a fluid. All particles, light, strange, or charmed flow collectively as if being carried by the same fluid, proving the strength of the interactions between QGP constituents.

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May 18, 2018

The intriguing charm flow

In ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions at CERN's LHC accelerator, a new state of matter is formed: the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). It is a kind of very dense and hot "soup" containing only the most elementary constituents of matter. A few microseconds after the Big Bang, the Universe would have passed through this state. Because of the interactions between its constituents, the QGP flows like a fluid.

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Apr 25, 2017

Can Quark-Gluon Plasma Be Produced by Proton Collisions?

According to the ALICE collaboration at LHC (CERN), certain rare proton collisions have properties that are similar to those of a quark–gluon plasma. In the past, these properties had been observed for collisions of heavy nuclei only. The physicists are now confronted with a new enigma: how can a state of quark–gluon plasma emerge in a system as "small" as that generated by a collision between two protons?

Nov 21, 2014

L’age de glace du LHC

Le Large Hadron Collider (LHC) au CERN a récemment mené à bien le programme de collisions de protons sur des noyaux de plomb. C’est à dessein que cette catégorie de collisions a été choisie, car elle permet d’étudier comment l’environnement nucléaire perturbe la structure interne d’un nucléon individuel donné dans le noyau de plomb.

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Dec 02, 2010

ALICE in a wonderland of quarks and gluons

The first lead-lead collision results have been published

After almost a year collecting data from proton-proton collisions, the LHC at CERN began the injection of lead ions at the beginning of November, with the first collisions obtained on November 8. The energy in the nucleon-nucleon center of mass is 2.76 TeV, around ten times greater than that achieved previously by the RHIC in Brookhaven USA. The first results from ALICE have been made available without delay.

Aug 05, 2010

The LHC climbs the Palace steps

Paris was the first to hear about the LHC's initial physics results

The 35th International Conference on High-Energy Physics was held at the Palais des Congrès in Paris from 22 to 28 July—an opportunity for the LHC teams to present their first results. IRFU is involved in three of the four major collaborative projects that have set up their detectors at the collision points in the ring: Alice, Atlas, and CMS. Our teams have contributed in particular to some fundamental analyses for the control of the detectors, whose performance has exceeded expectations.

Dec 23, 2009

ALICE has done wonders with its first collisions

Monday, 23 November 2009, marked the first particle beam collision inside the large detectors of the LHC. ALICE saw its first collisions at an energy of 900 GeV, enabling it to check for correct operation of the 18 large detectors which comprise it. Since 27 November, with just a few days worth of data, the collaboration has even published an article confirming some existing measurements.

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May 05, 2009

Cosmic spotlight on the ALICE muon arm

At the end of March 2009, the ALICE Muon Spectrometer took cosmic rays over a period of two weeks. The ALICE group at Saclay2 was closely involved in the design, development, construction and installation of a part of the chambers of this Spectrometer3. The purpose of the cosmic ray test was to check the performance of the entire system, from acquisition to reconstruction of the data. The acquisition system readout about a million channels and the data was recorded on the computing grid.

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Division of Electronics, Detectors and Computing for Physics (DEDIP)

Institute of Research into the Fundamental Laws of the Universe