"Studying nuclear matter under extreme conditions with the ALICE experiment at the LHC"

Roberto Preghenella,
CERN


Heavy-ion collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) allow to study nuclear matter under extreme conditions of temperature and energy-density, where the transition to the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is expected to occur. ALICE is a unique general-purpose heavy-ion detector at the LHC, designed to fulfil challenging tracking and particle-identification requirements. The experiment is able to identify particles in a wide momentum range by combining different detecting systems and techniques. In this seminar I will describe the experimental apparatus and report on the main results. Particular focus will be given on the production of identified particles and on the study of collective phenomena and macroscopic statistical properties of the produced matter.