Simulation in ALICE

ALICE, the experiment dedicated to the study of heavy ion collisions at the LHC, uses an object-oriented framework for simulation, reconstruction and analysis (AliRoot) based on ROOT. Here, we describe the general ALICE simulation strategy and those components of the framework related to simulation. Two main requirements have driven the development of the simulation components. First, the possibility to run different transport codes with the same user code for geometry and detector response has led to the development of the Virtual Monte Carlo concept. Second, simulation has to provide tools to efficiently study events ranging from low-multiplicity pp collisions to Pb-Pb collisions with up to 80000 primary particles per event. This has led to the development of a variety of collaborating generator classes and specific classes for event merging.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 6 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures. PSN TUMT00

Polarization and spatial coherence of electromagnetic waves in uncorrelated disordered media

Spatial field correlation functions represent a key quantity for the description of mesoscopic phenomena in disordered media and the optical characterization of complex materials. Yet many aspects related to the vector nature of light waves have not been investigated so far. We study theoretically the polarization and coherence properties of electromagnetic waves produced by a dipole source in a three-dimensional uncorrelated disordered medium. The spatial field correlation matrix is calculated analytically using a multiple scattering theory for polarized light. This allows us to provide a formal description of the light depolarization process in terms of "polarization eigenchannels" and to derive analytical formulas for the spatial coherence of multiply-scattered light