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:
- Giacomo Cacciapaglia, Thomas Flacke, Myeonghun Park, Mengchao Zhang. Exotic decays of top partners: mind the search gap. Physics Letters B, 2019, 798, pp.135015. ⟨10.1016/j.physletb.2019.135015⟩. ⟨hal-02302833⟩
- Rebecca Meissner, Linda Feketeová, Anita Ribar, Katharina Fink, Paulo LimĂŁo-Vieira, et al.. Electron Ionization of Imidazole and Its Derivative 2-Nitroimidazole. Journal of The American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 2019, 30 (12), pp.2678-2691. ⟨10.1007/s13361-019-02337-w⟩. ⟨hal-02447932⟩
- François Lux, Vu Long Tran, Eloise Thomas, Sandrine Dufort, Fabien Rossetti, et al.. AGuIX® from bench to bedside—Transfer of an ultrasmall theranostic gadolinium-based nanoparticle to clinical medicine. British Journal of Radiology, 2019, 92 (1093), pp.20180365. ⟨10.1259/bjr.20180365⟩. ⟨hal-01935540⟩
- O. StĂ©zowski. Compte rendu des actions du groupe #5. AssemblĂ©e GĂ©nĂ©rale du GDR RESANET, Dec 2018, Orsay, France. ⟨in2p3-02101708⟩
- J. Marteau, M. Tramontini, M. Rosas-Carbajal, F. Zyserman, B. Carlus, et al.. Muon imaging and monitoring at the Mont Terri underground rock laboratory, Switzerland.. American Geophysical Union, Dec 2018, Washington, United States. pp. 1865-1876. ⟨hal-03551045⟩
- Antonio Uras. Heavy-flavour-production studies in a new energy and rapidity domain with AFTER@LHC. 9th International Conference on Hard and Electromagnetic Probes of High-Energy Nuclear Collisions : Hard Probes 2018. (HP2018), Oct 2018, Aix-les-Bains, France. ⟨hal-02082243⟩
- Linda Feketeová. Out of equilibrium dynamics of water nanodroplets. European Astrobiology Network Association (EANA 2018), Sep 2018, Berlin, Germany. ⟨in2p3-02072383⟩
- Anne-Sophie Wozny, Gersende Alphonse, Guillaume Vares, Caterina Monini, Jean-Baptiste Guy, et al.. Spatial ROS distribution to explains the differences in the invasion/migration processes of cancer stem cells in response to photons and carbon ions. 64th Annual Meeting of the Radiation Research Society, Sep 2018, Chicago, United States. ⟨hal-02063655⟩
- Alexandra Lauret, Pierre Philouze, CĂ©line MalĂ©sys, Jonathan Lopez, Philippe CĂ©ruse, et al.. Circulating tumor cells in the future of personalized radio(chimio)therapy for HNSCC patients. 64th Annual Meeting of the Radiation Research Society, Sep 2018, Chicago, United States. ⟨hal-02063575⟩
- D. Contardo. Future Collider Detectors and Technology. 2018 LHC days in Split, Sep 2018, Split, Croatia. ⟨hal-02063886⟩
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