Performance highlights from ALICE
Abstract
The ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC has undergone a major upgrade program for Run 3, enabling high-precision studies of the quark-gluon plasma and rare probes in high-multiplicity environments. Key detector improvements, including the new Inner Tracking System (ITS2) with 12.8 billion pixels and a first layer at 22 mm from the nominal interaction point, and a GEM-based Time Projection Chamber, facilitate data taking at a Pb-Pb interaction rate of 50 kHz at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.36$ TeV and, in pp, selective rates up to 1 MHz at $\sqrt{s}=13.6$ TeV. The O$^2$ computing framework enables online/offline integration and selective data storage through an offline trigger program, called skimming, compressing datasets to 4.5% of their original size. In 2022-2024, ALICE collected over 4.7 trillion pp events, 72.1 pb${}^{-1}$, and more than 80 PB of Pb-Pb data, 3 nb$^{-1}$, with more than 96% availability. The detector upgrades and new algorithms have resulted in a factor 2-5 improvement in track impact parameter resolution and a factor of 7 gain in distance of closest approach resolution for weak strange decays, significantly enhancing the experiment's capability to reconstruct short-lived particles and rare decay channels.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Particle Detector Development and Performance
High-Energy Particle Collisions Research
Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
Publication details
- Pages
- 120–120
- Publication date
- 8 January 2026
- Language
- EN