Speaker
Description
The ALICE experiment currently underway at the CERN Large Hadron Collider is one of the largest and most challenging scientific enterprises ever realized in the field of nuclear and subnuclear physics. Its main mission is to characterize the properties of the quark-gluon plasma, the state of matter that is thought to have existed in the early instants of the Universe after the Big Bang. Such a state of matter can be created in the laboratory by colliding beams of heavy nuclei, which are accelerated to reach a velocity close to the speed of light, and its properties are studied by measuring with complex detectors the thousands of particles that flyout from the collision region. The progress in this research field strongly relies on the continuous improvement of particle colliders and detectors, with increasing collision energies and rates and with higher precision, respectively. In my talk, after a brief introduction on the ALICE’s experiment, I will present its long-term plans and the scientific and technological opportunities they open.
