https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-12935-y
Review
The ALICE experiment: a journey through QCD
1
A.I. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory (Yerevan Physics Institute) Foundation, Yerevan, Armenia
2
AGH University of Krakow, Cracow, Poland
3
Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine
4
Department of Physics and Centre for Astroparticle Physics and Space Science (CAPSS), Bose Institute, Kolkata, India
5
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA
6
Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China
7
Centro de Aplicaciones Tecnológicas y Desarrollo Nuclear (CEADEN), Havana, Cuba
8
Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados (CINVESTAV), Mexico City, Mérida, Mexico
9
Chicago State University, Chicago, IL, USA
10
China Institute of Atomic Energy, Beijing, China
11
Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Republic of Korea
12
Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
13
COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad, Pakistan
14
Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA
15
Department of Physics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
16
Department of Physics, Pusan National University, Pusan, Republic of Korea
17
Department of Physics, Sejong University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
18
Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
19
Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
20
Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
21
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy
22
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Cagliari, Italy
23
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Trieste, Italy
24
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Turin, Italy
25
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Bologna, Italy
26
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Catania, Italy
27
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Padua, Italy
28
Dipartimento di Fisica ‘E.R. Caianiello’ dell’Università and Gruppo Collegato INFN, Salerno, Italy
29
Dipartimento DISAT del Politecnico and Sezione INFN, Turin, Italy
30
Dipartimento di Scienze MIFT, Università di Messina, Messina, Italy
31
Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica ‘M. Merlin’ and Sezione INFN, Bari, Italy
32
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland
33
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Split, Split, Croatia
34
Faculty of Engineering and Science, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway
35
Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
36
Faculty of Physics, Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria
37
Faculty of Science, P.J. Šafárik University, Kosice, Slovak Republic
38
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
39
Fudan University, Shanghai, China
40
Gangneung-Wonju National University, Gangneung, Republic of Korea
41
Department of Physics, Gauhati University, Guwahati, India
42
Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen- und Kernphysik, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany
43
Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP), Helsinki, Finland
44
High Energy Physics Group, Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
45
Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Bucharest, Romania
46
HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Budapest, Hungary
47
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT), Mumbai, India
48
Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore, India
49
INFN, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Frascati, Italy
50
INFN, Sezione di Bari, Bari, Italy
51
INFN, Sezione di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
52
INFN, Sezione di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
53
INFN, Sezione di Catania, Catania, Italy
54
INFN, Sezione di Padova, Padua, Italy
55
INFN, Sezione di Pavia, Pavia, Italy
56
INFN, Sezione di Torino, Turin, Italy
57
INFN, Sezione di Trieste, Trieste, Italy
58
Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea
59
Institute for Gravitational and Subatomic Physics (GRASP), Utrecht University/Nikhef, Utrecht, The Netherlands
60
Institute of Experimental Physics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Kosice, Slovak Republic
61
Institute of Physics, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Bhubaneswar, India
62
Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
63
Institute of Space Science (ISS), Bucharest, Romania
64
Institut für Kernphysik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
65
Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico
66
Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil
67
Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico
68
iThemba LABS, National Research Foundation, Somerset West, South Africa
69
Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, Republic of Korea
70
Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe Universität Frankfurt Institut für Informatik, Fachbereich Informatik und Mathematik, Frankfurt, Germany
71
Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
72
KTO Karatay University, Konya, Turkey
73
Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie, Université Grenoble-Alpes, CNRS-IN2P3, Grenoble, France
74
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA
75
Division of Particle Physics, Department of Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
76
Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science, Nagasaki, Japan
77
Nara Women’s University (NWU), Nara, Japan
78
Department of Physics, School of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
79
National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland
80
National Institute of Science Education and Research, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Jatni, India
81
National Nuclear Research Center, Baku, Azerbaijan
82
National Research and Innovation Agency-BRIN, Jakarta, Indonesia
83
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
84
Nikhef, National Institute for Subatomic Physics, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
85
Nuclear Physics Group, STFC Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, UK
86
Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Husinec-Řež, Czech Republic
87
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
88
Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
89
Physics Department, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
90
Physics Department, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
91
Physics Department, University of Jammu, Jammu, India
92
Physics Program and International Institute for Sustainability with Knotted Chiral Meta Matter (SKCM2), Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan
93
Physikalisches Institut, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
94
Physikalisches Institut, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
95
Physik Department, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany
96
Politecnico di Bari and Sezione INFN, Bari, Italy
97
Research Division and ExtreMe Matter Institute EMMI, GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany
98
Saga University, Saga, Japan
99
Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Kolkata, India
100
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
101
Sección Física, Departamento de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Peru
102
Stefan Meyer Institut für Subatomare Physik (SMI), Vienna, Austria
103
SUBATECH, IMT Atlantique, Nantes Université, CNRS-IN2P3, Nantes, France
104
Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea
105
Suranaree University of Technology, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand
106
Technical University of Košice, Kosice, Slovak Republic
107
The Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Cracow, Poland
108
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
109
Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, Culiacán, Mexico
110
Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil
111
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil
112
Universidade Federal do ABC, Santo André, Brazil
113
Universitatea Nationala de Stiinta si Tehnologie Politehnica Bucuresti, Bucharest, Romania
114
University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
115
University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
116
University of Jyväskylä, Jyvaskyla, Finland
117
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA
118
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
119
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
120
University of South-Eastern Norway, Kongsberg, Norway
121
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA
122
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
123
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
124
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan
125
Universität Münster, Institut für Kernphysik, Münster, Germany
126
Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS/IN2P3, LPC, Clermont-Ferrand, France
127
Université de Lyon, CNRS/IN2P3, Institut de Physique des 2 Infinis de Lyon, Lyon, France
128
Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, IPHC UMR 7178, 67000, Strasbourg, France
129
Départment de Physique Nucléaire (DPhN), Université Paris-Saclay, Centre d’Etudes de Saclay (CEA), IRFU, Saclay, France
130
Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS/IN2P3, IJCLab, Orsay, France
131
Università degli Studi di Foggia, Foggia, Italy
132
Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli, Italy
133
Università di Brescia, Brescia, Italy
134
Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Kolkata, India
135
Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland
136
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA
137
Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
138
Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
139
Zentrum für Technologie und Transfer (ZTT), Worms, Germany
140
Affiliated with an Institute Covered by a Cooperation Agreement with CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
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Affiliated with an International Laboratory Covered by a Cooperation Agreement with CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
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Max-Planck-Institut fur Physik, Munich, Germany
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Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), Bologna, Italy
144
Dipartimento DET del Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy
145
Department of Applied Physics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
146
Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Wroclaw, Wrocław, Poland
147
An Institution Covered by a Cooperation Agreement with CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
148
CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
Received:
20
January
2023
Accepted:
20
May
2024
Published online:
14
August
2024
The ALICE experiment was proposed in 1993, to study strongly-interacting matter at extreme energy densities and temperatures. This proposal entailed a comprehensive investigation of nuclear collisions at the LHC. Its physics programme initially focused on the determination of the properties of the quark–gluon plasma (QGP), a deconfined state of quarks and gluons, created in such collisions. The ALICE physics programme has been extended to cover a broader ensemble of observables related to Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions. The experiment has studied Pb–Pb, Xe–Xe, p–Pb and pp collisions in the multi-TeV centre of mass energy range, during the Run 1–2 data-taking periods at the LHC (2009–2018). The aim of this review is to summarise the key ALICE physics results in this endeavor, and to discuss their implications on the current understanding of the macroscopic and microscopic properties of strongly-interacting matter at the highest temperatures reached in the laboratory. It will review the latest findings on the properties of the QGP created by heavy-ion collisions at LHC energies, and describe the surprising QGP-like effects in pp and p–Pb collisions. Measurements of few-body QCD interactions, and their impact in unraveling the structure of hadrons and hadronic interactions, will be discussed. ALICE results relevant for physics topics outside the realm of QCD will also be touched upon. Finally, prospects for future measurements with the ALICE detector in the context of its planned upgrades will also be briefly described.
T.M. Cormier, R.D. Majka, L. Malinina: Deceased.
The authors of this review are members of the ALICE Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. ALICE’s roughly 2000 members originate from 40 countries and 173 institutes - making it the largest-ever experimental collaboration dedicated to studying relativistic heavy-ion collisions. These members range from undergraduates to emeriti, scientists, and engineers, united in a global effort to move beyond the frontiers of science. They have, and continue to be, dedicated to unlocking nature’s secrets of nuclear matter - with the ultimate goal of developing a profound understanding of the formation of the observable mass in the cosmos.
© The Author(s) 2024
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Funded by SCOAP3.
