Charged kaon femtoscopic correlations in pp collisions at sqrts=7 TeV.

Correlations of two charged identical kaons (KchKch) are measured in pp collisions at 1as = 7 TeV by the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). One-dimensional KchKch correlation functions are constructed in three multiplicity and four transverse momentum ranges. The KchKch femtoscopic source parameters R and are extracted. The KchKch correlations show a slight increase of femtoscopic radii with increasing multiplicity and a slight decrease of radii with increasing transverse momentum. These trends are similar to the ones observed for and K0s K0s correlations in pp and heavy ion collisions. However at high multiplicities, there is an indication that the one-dimensional correlation radii for charged kaons are larger than those for pions in contrast to what was observed in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider

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

Two- and three-pion quantum statistics correlations in Pb-Pb collisions at 1asNN = 2.76 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Correlations induced by quantum statistics are sensitive to the spatiotemporal extent as well as dynamics of particle-emitting sources in heavy-ion collisions. In addition, such correlations can be used to search for the presence of a coherent component of pion production. Two- and three-pion correlations of same and mixed charge are measured at low relative momentum to estimate the coherent fraction of charged pions in Pb-Pb collisions at 1asNN = 2.76 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider with ALICE. The genuine three-pion quantum statistics correlation is found to be suppressed relative to the two-pion correlation based on the assumption of fully chaotic pion emission. The suppression is observed to decrease with triplet momentum. The observed suppression at low triplet momentum may correspond to a coherent fraction in charged-pion emission of 23% \ub1 8%