Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 24: Heavy Ion Collisions and QCD Phases 3

HK 24.2: Group Report

Tuesday, March 24, 2015, 15:00–15:30, T/HS1

Investigating Heavy-Ion Collisions with Neutral Mesons in the ALICE Calorimeters — •Baldo Sahlmüller for the ALICE collaboration — Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

One of the main purposes of the LHC is the investigation of the quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions. In order to interpret such measurements, the initial state of such collisions, i.e. the lead nucleus, and its effects on observables such as the modification of hadron transverse momentum spectra have to be understood. This initial state is studied in p-Pb collisions. Furthermore, pp collisions function as baseline measurement for the aforementioned larger systems and are necessary to extract fundamental parameters such as fragmentation functions.

The π⁰ and η mesons can be measured in electromagnetic calorimeters via their two-photon decays. In the first run of the LHC, ALICE comprised two different calorimeters, PHOS and EMCAL, that offer different advantages and the possibility of two independent measurements of the same observables such as the transverse momentum distribution of neutral mesons.

We will present the status of ALICE measurements of neutral mesons with the EMCAL and PHOS detectors. The focus will be on technical aspects of the analyses and present results from pp and p-Pb collisions. Furthermore, we will give an outlook to future measurements in the second LHC run that will start in 2015.

Supported by BMBF and the Helmholtz Association.