Fast Interaction Trigger for ALICE upgrade

We present the structure, functionalities and the first in-beam performance of the ALICE Fast Interaction Trigger (FIT). FIT comprises three detectors: FT0, FV0 and FDD, which use Cherenkov and scintillation effects to detect charged particles originating from proton-proton (pp) and heavy-ion collisions. FIT generates triggers for ALICE, monitors luminosity and background, measures collision time, and determines global collision parameters, such as forward multiplicity, centrality and event plane. FIT uses dedicated front-end electronics to measure time and charge of pulses at pp bunch crossing interval of 25 ns and pp (Pb-Pb) interaction rates of up to 1 MHz (50 kHz). FIT has been installed in ALICE, and its commissioning is ongoing. Upon exposition to pp collisions at the LHC injection energy of E-CMS = 450 GeV FIT shows good performance in terms of the collision time resolution of 26 ps and the vertex resolution of 0.8 cm. It is important to note that the presented figures reflect the performance of non-calibrated detectors at lower-than-nominal collision energy (13-14 TeV). They are, therefore, expected to improve.Peer reviewe

Status of the Fast Interaction Trigger for ALICE Upgrade

Publisher Copyright: © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).The Fast Interaction Trigger (FIT) denotes a set of three new detectors being part of the upgrade of ALICE in preparation for Run 3 of the LHC at CERN. To fulfill its physics objectives, ALICE aims to collect in Run 3 all minimum-bias data at the target interaction rate of 50 kHz for Pb-Pb and up to 1 MHz for pp collisions. This challenging increase in data rates of almost two orders of magnitude compared with Run 1 and Run 2 requires major improvements in all ALICE subdetectors, especially in their readout. While some of the upgraded ALICE detectors can operate in a continuous readout mode others need the fast trigger, specifically: Transition Radiation Detector (TRD), Charged-Particle Veto (CPV), High Momentum Particle Identification (HMPID), calorimeters and Photon Spectrometer (PHOS). Besides generating triggers for them, the FIT detectors will monitor luminosity, will provide the collision start time for particle identification via the time of flight, will measure the particle multiplicity in the forward direction, the centrality and the event plane, and will participate in diffractive physics measurements. The FIT consists of the following three detectors: FT0 - a set of two fast Cherenkov arrays specializing in minimum-bias trigger generation and luminosity measurement, located on both sides of the interaction point; FV0 - a large segmented scintillator disk focusing on multiplicity triggers and event plane determination, attached to the FT0 array located opposite to the Muon Spectrometer; and FDD (Forward Diffractive Detector) - also a scintillator located at very high pseudorapidities, concentrating on background monitoring and diffractive physics. The assembly of FIT detectors is close to completion. All components are on time for installation at ALICE between December 2020 and May 2021 according to the present schedule.Peer reviewe

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged jet production in root s(NN)=2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions

We present measurements of the azimuthal dependence of charged jet production in central and semi-central root s(NN) = 2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions with respect to the second harmonic event plane, quantified as nu(ch)(2) (jet). Jet finding is performed employing the anti-k(T) algorithm with a resolution parameter R = 0.2 using charged tracks from the ALICE tracking system. The contribution of the azimuthal anisotropy of the underlying event is taken into account event-by-event. The remaining (statistical) region-to-region fluctuations are removed on an ensemble basis by unfolding the jet spectra for different event plane orientations independently. Significant non-zero nu(ch)(2) (jet) is observed in semi-central collisions (30-50% centrality) for 20 <p(T)(ch) (jet) <90 GeV/c. The azimuthal dependence of the charged jet production is similar to the dependence observed for jets comprising both charged and neutral fragments, and compatible with measurements of the nu(2) of single charged particles at high p(T). Good agreement between the data and predictions from JEWEL, an event generator simulating parton shower evolution in the presence of a dense QCD medium, is found in semi-central collisions. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

Forward-central two-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=5.02 TeV

Two-particle angular correlations between trigger particles in the forward pseudorapidity range (2.5 2GeV/c. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B. V.Peer reviewe

Event-shape engineering for inclusive spectra and elliptic flow in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S=2.76 TeV

Peer reviewe

Production of He-4 and (4) in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S=2.76 TeV at the LHC

Results on the production of He-4 and (4) nuclei in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S = 2.76 TeV in the rapidity range vertical bar y vertical bar <1, using the ALICE detector, are presented in this paper. The rapidity densities corresponding to 0-10% central events are found to be dN/dy4(He) = (0.8 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.3 (syst)) x 10(-6) and dN/dy4 = (1.1 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.2 (syst)) x 10(-6), respectively. This is in agreement with the statistical thermal model expectation assuming the same chemical freeze-out temperature (T-chem = 156 MeV) as for light hadrons. The measured ratio of (4)/He-4 is 1.4 +/- 0.8 (stat) +/- 0.5 (syst). (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe

Elliptic flow of muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays at forward rapidity in Pb-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=2.76TeV

The elliptic flow, v(2), of muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays at forward rapidity (2.5 <y <4) is measured in Pb-Pb collisions at root s(NN)= 2.76TeVwith the ALICE detector at the LHC. The scalar product, two- and four-particle Q cumulants and Lee-Yang zeros methods are used. The dependence of the v(2) of muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays on the collision centrality, in the range 0-40%, and on transverse momentum, p(T), is studied in the interval 3 <p(T)<10 GeV/c. A positive v(2) is observed with the scalar product and two-particle Q cumulants in semi-central collisions (10-20% and 20-40% centrality classes) for the p(T) interval from 3 to about 5GeV/c with a significance larger than 3 sigma, based on the combination of statistical and systematic uncertainties. The v(2) magnitude tends to decrease towards more central collisions and with increasing pT. It becomes compatible with zero in the interval 6 <p(T)<10 GeV/c. The results are compared to models describing the interaction of heavy quarks and open heavy-flavour hadrons with the high-density medium formed in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe