First Physics at the LHC ALICE Bjørn S. Nilsen Creighton University

2 CERN and the LHC ALICE LHCb CMS ATLAS Genevé 9/29/1954 CERN born 11/24/1959 PS Starts 1976 SPS Starts July 1989 LEP starts 12/13/1990 ALICE collaboration formed 1993 ALICE proposed 11/2/2000 LEP ends 3/27/2007 Small Explosion Inner Triplet damaged 9/19/2008 Big Explosion 53 magnets damaged 11/23/2009 LHC’s First Collisions 12/14/ TeV Collisions 3/30/ TeV Collisions

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 3 LHC Experiments ATLAS Higgs Search New Particle Search Peripheral Heavy-Ion program –LHCf CMS Higgs Search New Particle Search Heavy-Ion Physics –Jets –Heavy resonances –TOTEM ALICE –Comprehensive Heavy- Ion program –Complementary p+p program LHCb –B factory

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 4 A Large Ion Collider Experiment PHOS, cpv Muon, MTRG VHMPID? ADD Dcal (EMCAL compleation) T0 PMD V0 FMD ZDC ACORDE HMPID TRD TOF TPC ITS, SPD, SDD, SSD EMCAL

Measuring the Properties of the Quark Gluon Plasma April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 5 QGP The Quark Gluon Plasma, QGP, is a state of matter dominated by the nuclear strong force. Hottest Thing on Earth Ice Freezes 0 C Water Boils 100 C Melting Point Iron 2750F (1510 C) Surface of Sun 6,000 C Center of Sun ~15,000,000 C Plasma (Tokamak) ~100,000,000 C QGP ~4,000,000,000,000 C

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 6 Particle Physics in a Nutshell Atoms –Electrons –Nucleus (Quarks + gluons) Protons (u  u  d) Neutrons (d  d  u) Leptons e ±,  ±,  ± Quarks u c t 2/3 e d s b -1/3 e Force partials , W ±, Z 0, g, graviton Higgs (Weak symmetry breaking) h

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 7 Kinematics in a nut shell  pzpz Mandelstam Variables ? = cm Energy 2

Flow Equation of State Physical Review C, Volume 68, (2003) How pressure gradients affect the QGP fluid.

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 9 Jet Suppression at STAR Elena Bruna, for the STAR Collaboration Yale University, presentation at Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Ocho Rios, Jamaica January 2 - 9, 2010 QGP Jet How fast moving colored objects behave in a strong force dominated medium

First ALICE p-p Event √s=900 GeV November

Muon Spectrometer ITS On 6 th December, ‘stable beams’ were declared & we could switch on all ALICE detectors for the first time.. TPC, TRD, TOF, HMPID First ALICE Events

First Publication This is the first (and easiest) of many numbers we need to (re)measure to get confidence in our detectors, tune the simulations, study background,.... last time measured at the ISR for pp The average number of charged particles created perpendicular to the beam in pp collisions at 900 GeV is: dN/d  = 3.10 ± 0.13 (stat) ± 0.22 (syst)

Most Recent Preliminary Results p-p interactions Charged particle multiplicity triggered by at least one charged particle within |  |<1. √s 0.9 TeV2.36 TeV7.0 TeV Inclusive>0  |<1 3.78± ± ±

Most Recent Preliminary Results p-p interactions April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 14

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 15 Calculated in Offline from tracklets in Silicon Pixel Detector:  x ~ 475 µm  y ~ 475 µm  z ~ 4.2 cm Interaction Vertex

Particle ID by dE/dx TPC No vertex cut ! ITS Preliminary

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 17 Particle ID working within each detector 15/2/2006 LHCC Status Report J. Schukraft TRD Electrons Pions velocity v/c TOF Protons Kaons Pions all plots: preliminary calibration & alignment ! Preliminary

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 18 PHOS Finds  0    1 < p t < 1.5 GeV PHOS (9 m 2 ) Noise 00 Preliminary

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 19 Track reconstruction in TPC TPC Rods SSD TPC Vessel 1 TPC Vessel 2 SDD SPD  -ray image of ALICE photon conversion vertices Preliminary

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 20  0 using TPC    e + e - e + e - m  0 = MeV Preliminary

PDG: MeV  p PDG: MeV  p Finding the Zoo of Particles  p  Preliminary

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 22 Still more PDG: MeV K 0 s      PDG: MeV Preliminary

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 23 Once particles are identified p/p ratio to study Baryon Transport via di-quark stopping or gluon junctions And Many other Ratios Preliminary

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 24 Including more complicated measures  - HBT correlation function to study space-time evolution (also reference for heavy ion data) Data Monte Carlo (no HBT correlations) Preliminary

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 25 Conclusion Finally after many years, data is coming –At injection energy, 900 GeV –At LHC’s first acceleration to 2.36 GeV –Now LHC operating at 7.00 GeV Things are working better than expected There still is a lot of work to go Many exciting results are anticipated A number of unexpected things will happen A number of unexpected results will surprise us all.

Upcoming Schedule End of 2010, First Ion-Ion run at 2.75 ? TeV/n cm. 2011, full p-p run at 7 TeV cm, at/near design luminosity. End of summer 2011, Pb-Pb run at 2.75 TeV/n cm. After summer 2011, long shutdown to finish repairs and get machine working at 14 TeV p-p cm.

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 27 First Cosmic seen in ALICE TPC April

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 28 First Beam Gas Events in ITS 6/4/2008

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 29 First beam in LHC September Signals as seen in ALICE’s V0A (blue) and V0C (red) Detectors Machine group has placed, up stream of ALICE, a small Wire Chamber which the beam interacts with producing a particle shower seen by ALICE.

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 30 During down time Removed and reinstalled Mini-space frame Cabling nightmare, Please don’t do it again Installed 4 EMCal Super Modules Repaired TPC and other detectors Fixed and many sundries things Significant improvements in software, Online, Offline, and Grid

April Bjorn S. Nilsen, Creighton U. Mount Michael High School 31 ALICE V0 Timing V0-A side V0-C side from interaction region from beam line from interaction region from beam line V0-A V0-C