ALICE Newsletter No. 399
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No.399,
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ONGOING AND UPCOMING EVENTS
On 8 March, International Women's Day, the ALICE Collaboration recognizes the important contributions of women to the activities and achievements of the collaboration. The 130 women featured in the poster represent a fraction of the 450 women in the ALICE Collaboration, including about 200 female students.
More information in the ALICE Diversity Office webpage.
High-resolution picture in CDS
- ALICE Physics Forum: SQM approvals: 9 - 13 March 2026
For those at CERN, we have arranged for the following rooms for in-person attendance:
Monday: 6/2-024
Tuesday morning: 4/3-006
Tuesday afternoon: 503/1-001
Wednesday-Friday: 160/1-009
Thanks to the efforts of the collaboration, we have a wealth of new results being proposed. Looking forward to lively discussions next week!
- 7th ALICE Upgrade Week Calaserena Resort, Geremeas, Cagliari, 14-18 September 2026:
It is highly recommended to register and reserve the rooms as soon as possible to benefit from the discounted rates (until 1 April 2026) and room availability.
- ALICE UPC Workshop: Katowice, Poland, 15-19 June 2026
- ALICE Calendar 2026
- ALICE approvals calendar for 2026
NEWS and ANNOUNCEMENTS
- Hard Probes 2026 - call for plenary speaker nomination
- Invitation for 30’ ALICE highlight talk
- Please send your proposals to alice-cc@chairs@cern.ch by 14 March with few lines of motivations (self nominations are welcome)
- ALICE Conference Committee members positions available:
- Expertise in LF, Detectors/upgrades and HF are needed.
- Please send your nomination (self nominations are welcome) interest to CC chairs: Alice-cc-chairs@cern.ch before 13 March
- ALICE Breakthrough Prize PhD Grant 2026 (ALICE-BP-PhD-2026): PhD grants funded thanks to the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics awarded to the ALICE Collaboration. Deadline: 30 April 2026
- Accelerator Report: Protons are heading towards the LHC by Matteo Solfaroli, Deputy Leader of the Operations Group (BE-OP)
- Who’s who in the CERN senior leadership team: Get to know the new CERN Directorate, their backgrounds and their new roles, and watch the video interview with CERN Director-General Mark Thomson
- HiLumi LHC: full-scale tests start
EVENTS OF INTEREST
- BE Seminars, Friday 6 Mar 2026, 16:00: "Design and validation of a micrometric and adaptable calibration bench for Frequency Scanning Interferometry sensors" by Julia Anna Jeanne Calmels
- LHC Seminar, Tuesday 10 Mar 2026, 11:00: "Closing the gap in compressed SUSY searches at ATLAS" by Jeff Shahinian (University of Pennsylvania (US))
- Lattice seminar, Tuesday 10 Mar 2026, 17:00: "Solving SU(N) lattice gauge theories with Physics-Informed Neural Networks" by Simone Romiti
- TH Cosmo Coffee, Wednesday 11 Mar 2026, 11:30: "Electroweak Baryogenesis with BARYONET: Theory and Applications" by Dr GIULIO BARNI (IFT-UAM/CSIC Madrid)
- Collider Cross Talk, Thursday 12 Mar 2026, 11:00: "Semivisible jets [CMS, TH]" by Annapaola De Cosa (ETH Zurich (CH)), Tim Cohen (CERN)
- QTI Seminars, Thursday 12 Mar 2026, 11:00: "Quantum Tomography at High Energy Physics" by Tao Han
- CERN Colloquium, Thursday 12 Mar 2026, 16:30: "Ignis/Axiom-4 Mission: from launch to landing" by Slawosz Uznanski (CERN)
- "EFT, Everywhere, All at Once" 16–20 Mar 2026 CERN
NEW PAPERS ON THE ARXIV
PAPERS IN THE COLLABORATION REVIEW
Papers currently open for comments can be inspected using the link: Paper in Collaboration Review (Open for Comments).
NEWS FROM POINT 2
- ALICE
- During the last week, LHC continued with beam commissioning.
- ALICE has been in SUPERSAFE (with additional safety conditions for ITS, MCH, MID and TRD), and finalized the tests with the replay runs for the identification of the optimal number of EPNs for taking pp data at a collision rate of 750 kHz.
- On Wednesday morning, an issue with the pump of the TOF cooling system appeared, which had been fixed during the access on Thursday morning.
- Machine has almost completed the commissioning, and first Stable Beams may be declared during the weekend!
- Open shift blocks (to be filled urgently):
If you have any question about the training and, overall, on how to get ready to cover these earlier shifts do not hesitate to contact us (alice-rc@cern.ch). Dedicated trainings can be arranged.
- DCS, ECS, and QC expert shifts starting from 19 May
- DCS, ECS, and QC expert shifts starting from 19 May
- Run Manager (23 Feb - 8 Mar 2026): Ravindra Singh
CONFERENCES
CURRENT CONFERENCES AND SCHOOLS (starting this week)
- APS Global Physics Summit 2026: APS Joint March Meeting and April Meeting 2026, Denver, Colorado (United States), 15 - 20 March
SPEAKING OPPORTUNITIES (events within 3 months or deadline within 1 month)
- HEPiX Spring 2026 Workshop, Lisbon, Portugal, 20-24 April, abstract deadline 1 April
- 37th Rencontres de Blois - Particle Physics and Cosmology, Blois, France, 10-15 May 2026, abstract deadline 31 March
- possibility of 2 to 4 contributed talks => contact CC chairs
- QCD Evolution 2026 Workshop, El Escurial, Spain, 11-15 May, abstract deadline 30 April
- LHCP 2026: 14th Large Hadron Collider Physics Confernece, Paris, France, 18 - 22 May, abstract (posters) deadline: 20 March (FOR POSTERS ONLY)
- WPCF 2026: 18th Workshop on Particle Correlations and Femtoscopy, Budapest, Hungary, 18-22 May, abstract deadline: 30 March
- Invitation to submit abstracts + 1 plenary overview on Femtoscopy (contact CC chairs)
- BEACH 2026: XVI International Conference on Beauty, Charm, Hyperons in Hadronic Interactions, Florence, Italy, 8-12 June, abstract deadline: 15 April
- Invitation for 2 plenary talks:
- LHC multi-exp talk on recent results with light collision systems at the LHC and future perspectives, focus on the role of heavy flavours.
- Recent ALICE results and prospects for Run4 and 5 (focus on HF/DQ)
- Contact CC chais
- Possibilities for lighting talks and posters for juniors
- Invitation for 2 plenary talks:
- 4th Joint ECFA-NuPECC-APPEC Activity Workshop "Synergies between the EIC and the LHC", Cagliari, Italy, 8-10 June, abstract deadline 30 April
- QCD@Work 2026 - International Workshop on Quantum Chromodynamics - Theory and Experiment, Trani, Italy, 16-19 June, abstract deadline 1 April
- Invitations for multi-exp talk: recent results from LHC collab in light colliding systems (in particular pilot O-O and Ne-Ne runs).
- (25+5)-recent results from ALICE and future perspectives (25+5)
- 1 contributed talk (15+5)
- Contact CC chairs
- 18th International Workshop on Meson Physics (MESON2026) KRAKÓW, Poland, 25-30 June, abstract deadline 25 March
- 17th Conference on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum (QCHS26), Wrocław, Poland, 29 June - 4 July, abstract deadline 26 April
- Strong and Electro-Weak Matter 2026 (SEWM), Helsinki, Finland, 17-21 August, abstract deadline 30 April
- 9th Conference on Micropattern Gaseous Detectors (MPGD2026), Prague, Czechia, 31 August - 4 September, abstract deadline 24 April
SCHOOLS
- NFN School of Statistics 2026 (INFNStat2026), Caserta, Italy, 14-19 June, registration deadline 13 March
- QCD Master Class 2026 (school), Saint Jacut de la mer, France, 28 August - 10 September, registration deadline 31 March
- The XXII LNF Spring School “Bruno Touschek” in Nuclear, Subnuclear and Astroparticle Physics, INFN, Frascati, Italy, 11-15 May, registration deadline 30 April
| Upcoming major conferences | ||
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22-27 Mar 2026 |
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18-22 May 2026 |
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21-26 Jun 2026 |
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30 July - 5 Aug 2026 |
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JUNIOR'S CORNER
Message from Junior Representatives (Bianca, Rohaan, Sara)
- ALICE Run 3 Analysis Resources: a collection of all resources and news that can be helpful for people engaged in the analysis of ALICE Run 3 data. This is especially beneficial for those new to the Run 3 data analysis.
- Link to all ALICE Theses
- ALICE Theses website
- Guidelines for ALICE Thesis Video: a ~3-min video summarising the key results of the PhD thesis.
OUTREACH NEWS
- ALICE visits this week:
- Saturday 28 February 2026
- Queenswood School, UK
- Penduick, Italy
- Loreto Abbey Dalkey,Ireland
- IES Puzol, Spain
- Sunday 1st March 2026
- colleague’s friends, Switzerland
- Monday 2 March 2026
- VIP visit : His Excellency Mr Fedor Rosocha, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary,
- VIP Visit: Permanent Representative of the Slovak Republic to the United Nations Office and other international organisations in Geneva
- Tuesday 3 March 2026
- 1st Senior High School of Gerakas, Greece; I LO Bytom, Poland;
- VIP visit : Her Excellency Ms Celina Peña, Undersecretary for Technology and Innovation, United Mexican States
- Wednesday 4 March 2026
- St Thomas More Catholic School, UK
- Thursday 5 March 2026
- 2nd junior high school of Volos, Greece
- Le Gymnase Jean Sturm, France
- Friday 6 March 2026
- Birkenhead Sixth Form College, UK
- 2nd junior high school of Metamorfosi, Greece
- Saturday 28 February 2026
- ALICE Virtual Visits
- International Masterclasses - Hands-on Particle physics:
- Friday 6 March 2026 ALICE masterclasses were held in Frankfurt, Münster and Darmstadt
- New IPPOG Publication: "IPPOG: a global network for particle physics outreach and education", Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2026) 141:177
- Recent Social Media Highlights:
- ALICE 3 MID
- ALICE EMCal
- International Day of Women and Girls in Science
- Curiouser and curiouser: a riddle at the ALICE detector
DIVERSITY
- On 8 March, International Women's Day, the ALICE Collaboration recognizes the important contributions of women to the activities and achievements of the collaboration. The 130 women featured in the poster represent a fraction of the 450 women in the ALICE Collaboration, including about 200 female students. More information in the ALICE Diversity Office webpage.
- ALICE Diversity Office website can be accessed here. Your feedback is important. You can send us an email that will be treated confidentially by using the email address: alice-diversity-office@cern.ch or send us an anonymous message by using this form.