VISIT THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

Only official guides are authorized to bring visitors to ALICE. In order to become an ALICE guide, you have to be an ALICE member and you must subscribe to the ALICE guide training (1/2 day course at P2, please contact the ALICE LEXGLIMOS klaus.barth@cern.ch for any information). ALICE does not provide guides centrally. (guiding activities are done on a voluntary basis)
 
Type of visits:
  • Type 1: Surface only: during the LHC operation, visits are possible to the surface installations at Point 2: notably the permanent exhibition and the ALICE Control Centre (ARC). The tour allows to see the shaft at Point 2. 
  • Type 2: Surface + underground: these visits are possible only during LHC shutdown periods (next one will be the Long Shutdown 2). 
  • Type 3: Visits organized by CERN Visits Service: The Visits Service organizes groups visits to the ALICE exhibition from 10:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 17:00 from Monday to Saturday. It is therefore preferable that private ALICE visits are organized during the following time slot: 08:00-10:00, 13:00-15:00 and 17:00 onwards.
 
Procedure to register an ALICE private visit (type 1 or 2):
  • The organizer must be registered at CERN, i.e. must have a CERN account
  • The organizer must check that the visits calendar allows a suitable visit programme which does not interfere with standard visits.
  • Only qualified guides are permitted to use the exhibition remote control and to guide groups in the ALICE underground. It is up to the organizer to find an available guide.
  • The organizer submit a request for an ALICE private visit specifying he/she wants to visit ALICE only. The request will come through to the ALICE Secretariat to organize. You will receive a confirmation email, once the visit has been approved.
  • The organizer is asked to provide with the full list of the participants, including their name, first name, date/place of birth, country of birth, and nationality.
  • The organizer will have to pick up and remit the visitor badges to the visitors, should they need one. The badges will be available at the reception, building 33.
  • Should the organizer is a guide, he/she will fill in the IMPACT.
  • (type 2 only) after completing the visit, the organizer must attach the form with the dose information, duly signed by each of the visitors, and close the IMPACT.
The procedure can be found here and more detailed information on how to submit the IMPACT request can be found here.
 
Important remarks for underground visits:
For safety reasons, one guide can accompany max 12 visitors at the same time inside the Experiment. For groups larger than 12, a second guide (or an escort, e.g. not necessarily an official guide) is needed to assist the rest of the group upstairs. Up to 2 groups of 12 can visit the underground areas at the same time (provided that there is one guide per group).

Please consider that the duration of the visit (e.g. from arrival to departure) must be adapted to the number of visitors:
- 1 to 24 visitors: 1 hour min (2 official guides or 1 official guide and 1 escort)
- 25 to 48 visitors: 2 hours min (3 official guides or 1 official guide and 2 escorts)
- 49 to 72 visitors: 3 hours min (4 official guides or 2 official guides and 2 escorts)
- 73 to 96 visitors: 4 hours min (5 official guides or 2 official guides and 3 escorts)

For safety reasons the max number of visitors presents at once on site (site capacity) is 96. Therefore groups larger than 96 must be split into two or more slots (e.g. morning, afternoon).

Important remarks for surface visits and Exhibition:

The maximum number of visitors per group is 24 visitors for one guide.

The exhibition can welcome at the maximum 24 visitors, for larger groups, divide the visit into 2 groups.

For non-ALICE members: in case one does not know anybody in ALICE who could make a guided tour, a mail could be sent to alice-und-guides-public@cern.ch, which addresses all the ALICE official guides who may volunteer for such a task (please remember to indicate the date, preferred language and number of visitors). For the exhibition, the voluntary guides can be contacted at ALICE-EXHIB-GUIDES@cern.ch.

Visitors under 16 years old are not allowed to take part in an underground visit.
The ALICE underground areas cannot be accessed by wheeling chair people.

Note that for operational reasons your visit may be moved in time, or, in an extreme cases, cancelled on a short notice.
ALICE is located at the following address: 
CERN LHC2 - ALICE Experiment,
14 Chemin de la Tatte, 01630 Sergy, France
GPS coordinates: 46.250676,6.021398