Proton-Proton Physics with ALICE

TL;DR

The paper discusses ALICE's proton-proton physics program at LHC, highlighting its unique capabilities, initial physics goals, and the importance of pp measurements for understanding heavy-ion collision data.

Contribution

It introduces ALICE's pp measurement capabilities, unique features, and initial physics objectives, emphasizing the role of early measurements in model validation and heavy-ion analysis.

Findings

ALICE has a low pT cut-off and excellent PID capabilities.

Initial physics topics can be studied despite early LHC conditions.

Preparations are underway for first collision data analysis.

Abstract

The goal of the ALICE experiment at LHC is to study strongly interacting matter at high energy densities as well as the signatures and properties of the quark-gluon plasma. This goal manifests itself in a rich physics program. Although ALICE will mainly study heavy-ion collisions, a dedicated program will concentrate on proton-proton physics. The first part will introduce the ALICE experiment from a pp measurement's point of view. Two unique properties are its low pT cut-off and the excellent PID capabilities. The various topics of the proton-proton physics program, which will allow a close scrutiny of existing theoretical models, will be described. Furthermore, the interpretation of measurements of heavy-ion collisions necessitates the comparison to measurements of pp collisions. The second part will concentrate on the day-1 physics program of ALICE. At startup, neither the LHC luminosity nor its energy will have their nominal values. Furthermore, the ALICE detector is in the process of being aligned and calibrated. Still several physics topics can be studied from the very beginning. These will be presented as well as the effort that is already ongoing to be ready for the first collision. The statistics needed for each of the topics will be given with respect to the foreseen LHC startup scenario.