Elliptic flow of charged particles in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV

We report the first measurement of charged particle elliptic flow in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region (|$\eta$|<0.8) and transverse momentum range 0.2< $p_{\rm T}$< 5.0 GeV/$c$. The elliptic flow signal v$_2$, measured using the 4-particle correlation method, averaged over transverse momentum and pseudorapidity is 0.087 $\pm$ 0.002 (stat) $\pm$ 0.004 (syst) in the 40-50% centrality class. The differential elliptic flow v$_2(p_{\rm T})$ reaches a maximum of 0.2 near $p_{\rm T}$ = 3 GeV/$c$. Compared to RHIC Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV, the elliptic flow increases by about 30%. Some hydrodynamic model predictions which include viscous corrections are in agreement with the observed increase.Comment: 10 pages, 4 captioned figures, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/389

Rapidity and transverse momentum dependence of inclusive J/psi production in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

5 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett. B See paper for full list of authorsThe ALICE experiment at the LHC has studied inclusive J/psi production at central and forward rapidities in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. In this Letter, we report on the first results obtained detecting the J/psi through its dilepton decay into e+e- and mu+mu- pairs in the rapidity range |y|<0.9 and 2.

Production of inclusive gamma(1S) and gamma(2S) in p-Pb collisions at, root S-NN=5.02 TeV

We report on the production of inclusive \u3a5 (1S) and \u3a5 (2S) in p\u2013Pb collisions at 1asNN = 5.02 TeV at the LHC. The measurement is performed with the ALICE detector at backward ( 124.46 < ycms < 122.96) and forward (2.03 < ycms < 3.53) rapidity down to zero transverse momentum. The production cross sections of the \u3a5(1S) and \u3a5(2S) are presented, as well as the nuclear modification factor and the ratio of the forward to backward yields of \u3a5 (1S). A suppression of the inclusive \u3a5 (1S) yield in p\u2013Pb collisions with respect to the yield from pp collisions scaled by the number of binary nucleon\u2013nucleon collisions is observed at forward rapidity but not at backward rapidity. The results are compared to theoretical model calculations including nuclear shadowing or partonic energy loss effects

Performance of the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC

ALICE is the heavy-ion experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The experiment continuously took data during the first physics campaign of the machine from fall 2009 until early 2013, using proton and lead-ion beams. In this paper we describe the running environment and the data handling procedures, and discuss the performance of the ALICE detectors and analysis methods for various physics observables