The international collaboration ALICE (“A Large Ion Collider Experiment”), of which the eponymous research group of the IP2I in Lyon is a member, aims to study nuclear matter in a state of extremely high temperature, where the deconfinement of hadrons (including protons and neutrons) into plasma of quarks and gluons takes place.
Matter is made up of atoms, themselves made up of electrons surrounding a nucleus of protons and neutrons, the latter being formed of quarks, linked by gluons. No quark or gluon has ever been observed in isolation: they appear to be permanently bonded together and confined in composite particles. At temperatures 100,000 times higher than those at the centre of the Sun, they deconform to form a plasma, which would have existed a few microseconds after the Big Bang. This plasma is predicted by the fundamental theory of strong interaction, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), and its study allows us to understand the ultimate organization of matter subject to strong interaction and the very first moments of the universe.
The LHC collides lead ions to recreate conditions similar to those immediately after the Big Bang and form this quark and gluon plasma. For this infinitely small study, a huge detector has been built at the LHC. It is capable of measuring the particles emitted by the plasma as it expands and cools.
Our group has been involved in this construction and in obtaining major results in this field of physics.
The activities of the ALICE group of the IP2I of Lyon are twofold:
- the analysis of data collected in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN LHC
- participation in the construction and operation of the forward vertex trajectograph, the Muon Forward Tracker
Analysis of data collected in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN LHC
The physics analyses of the ALICE experiment carried out in the Lyon groups cover a wide range of subjects, from the light quark sector u, d, s with the study of the forward production of low mass vector mesons 
and 
in the dimuonic decay channel, to the heavy quarks sector c and b, with the study of the production of the quarkonium states of the 
and 
families. This analytical work has already led to a number of remarkable results, notably through the study of collective phenomena characterizing the evolution of the and mesons, namely the appearance of kinematic correlations between the meson and light hadrons in high multiplicity proton-Pb collisions, and the observation of elliptical flow of the 
meson compatible with zero in Pb-Pb collisions (behavior different from all the other particles studied).
Participation in the construction and operation of the forward vertex trajectograph, the Muon Forward Tracker
The group is also responsible for the construction and operation of the vertex forward trajectograph, the Muon Forward Tracker (MFT), one of the first applications in high energy physics of CMOS silicon pixel sensor technology. The MFT, which will be integrated into the ALICE detector starting with Run3 of the LHC (2021), is designed to enable precise measurement of the details of the vertex region for forward-produced particles, especially muons, whose different topologies and production processes can be studied.
NON-PERMANENTS:
- DOCTORANTS / DOCTORAL STUDENTS:
- J. Gascon. Recent results from EDELWEISS Dark Matter searches. 16th International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics, Sep 2019, Toyama, Japan. pp.012018, ⟨10.1088/1742-6596/1468/1/012018⟩. ⟨hal-02564666⟩
- Farvah Mahmoudi. Reconstructing MSSM Parameters from Higgs Searches. Strong dynamics for physics within and beyond the Standard Model at LHC and Future Colliders, Sep 2019, Trento, Italy. pp.86-90. ⟨hal-02550045⟩
- Benedetta Nodari, Gianmario Bergamin, Luigi Caponetto, Alessandro Caratelli, Davide Ceresa, et al.. First results from the CIC data aggregation ASIC for the Phase 2 CMS Outer Tracker. Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics, Sep 2019, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. pp.102, ⟨10.22323/1.370.0102⟩. ⟨hal-02572520⟩
- Simone Scarfi, Gianmario Bergamin, Alessandro Caratelli, Luigi Caponetto, Davide Ceresa, et al.. Study of a Triggered, Full Event Zero-Suppressed Front-End Readout Chain operating up to 1 MHz Trigger Rate and Pileup of 300 for CMS Outer Tracker upgrade at HL-LHC. Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics, Sep 2019, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. pp.012, ⟨10.22323/1.370.0012⟩. ⟨hal-02572513⟩
- Xiushan Chen, C. Combaret, C. Girerd, C. Guerin, I. Laktineh, et al.. Multi-channel time-tagging module for fast-timing Resistive Plate Chamber detectors. Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics, Sep 2019, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. pp.093, ⟨10.22323/1.370.0093⟩. ⟨hal-02572519⟩
- H. Moriya, W. Horiuchi, J.-M. Richard. Three-body correlations in mesonic-atom-like systems. 24th European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Sep 2019, Surrey, United Kingdom. pp.051, ⟨10.21468/SciPostPhysProc.3.051⟩. ⟨hal-02423737⟩
- Dimitrios Tsimpis. Consistent truncation on Calabi-Yau and Nearly-Kähler manifolds. 19th Hellenic School and Workshops on Elementary Particle Physics and Gravity, Aug 2019, Corfu, Greece. pp.122, ⟨10.22323/1.376.0122⟩. ⟨hal-02504614⟩
- Anne -Sophie Wozny, Gersende Alphonse, Céline Malesys, Caterina Monini, Philippe Lalle, et al.. Central role of spatial ROS distribution at the nanometric scale in the molecular response to carbon ion irradiation. ICRR 2019, Aug 2019, Manchester, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-02355504⟩
- Delphine Vernos, P. Rocchi, Marie-Thérèse Aloy, F. Lux, O. Tillement, et al.. Novel generation of ultrasmall high Z tailored nanoparticles for tumor cell radiosensitization. ICRR 2019, Aug 2019, Manchester, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-02358778⟩
- Safa Louati, Anne‐sophie Wozny, Jean-Baptiste Guy, Ladjohounlou Riad, Céline Malésys, et al.. Deciphering the role of stress granules in the cellular response to radiation of HNSCC cancer cells. ICRR 2019, Aug 2019, Manchester, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-02358809⟩
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