Mainz 2022 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 34: Invited Talks IV

HK 34.3: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 30, 2022, 12:00–12:30, HK-H1

Towards a next-generation LHC heavy-ion Experiment with ALICE — •Raphaelle Bailhache for the ALICE collaboration — Goether-universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions are used to study the physics of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions, i.e. high temperature and density, similar to those of the early universe. In such collisions a deconfined state of quarks and gluons, the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), is formed. Nuclear collisions at the LHC provide access to the highest-temperature, longest-lived experimentally accessible QGP. After three years of Long Shutdown and intensive installation of detector and accelerator upgrades, ALICE is about to take data at a peak Pb–Pb collision rate of 50 kHz to further characterize the properties of this unique state of matter. In spite of the ambitious scientific programme for the upcoming Runs 3 and 4, crucial questions will still remain unanswered with the present detector concepts. Therefore, a next-generation LHC heavy-ion experiment ALICE 3 is proposed for the 2030s. Among others, this should give access to next-level measurements of electromagnetic probes down to unprecedented very low momenta and a clean reconstruction of heavy-flavour hadrons including multi charm states and exotic objects inaccessible in LHC Run 3 and 4. Such measurements call for a substantial increase in luminosity in combination with unprecedented detector performance.

In this talk, we will present the physics programme of ALICE and the resulting detector requirements. We will then discuss a detector concept suitable to meet these requirements.