ALICE Newsletter No. 405
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No.405,
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ONGOING AND UPCOMING EVENTS
- "ALICE 3" Week: 4-8 May 2026: Please register by April 28 if you plan to participate in person. We need to count participants for the coffee breaks and the reception on Wednesday 6 May at R2.
- 7th ALICE Upgrade Week Calaserena Resort, Geremeas, Cagliari, 14-18 September 2026:
- ALICE UPC Workshop: Katowice, Poland, 15-19 June 2026
- ALICE Calendar 2026
- ALICE approvals calendar for 2026
- ALICE Breakthrough Prize PhD Grant 2026 (ALICE-BP-PhD-2026): Deadline: 30 April 2026
Contact: alice-breakthrough-grant-committee@cern.ch
NEWS and ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Kai’s visit to Mexico (13-17 April 2026):
A focused agenda to strengthen collaboration on the ALICE 3 project, with particular emphasis on MID - including dedicated meetings at UNAM, targeted discussions with the Mexican Congress on national participation, strategic engagements with the National Technological Institute, UAS, CINVESTAV and BUAP, and a meeting at the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation.
- Recent PhD in ALICE: congratulations to our new PhD graduate:
- Dr. Kshitish Kumar Pradhan
Thesis title: "Dynamics of an interacting hadron gas and measurements of Upsilon(nS) production and polarization in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13.6 TeV with ALICE"
Submitted to: Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India
Thesis defense: 7 April 2026
CDS: https://repository.cern/records/883vt-n0790
Supervisor: Prof. Raghunath Sahoo
Service Work: Muon and Global Muon aQC
- Dr. Kshitish Kumar Pradhan
- Mark Rayner (1983 – 2026)
- CERN Courier March-April 2026, Energy Frontier: The flavour dependence of jet structures
- "ALICE sees new sign of primordial plasma in proton collisions" 20 March 2026
- Accelerator Report: HiLumi LHC beam reliability runs pave the way to the future: By Bettina Mikulec
- "Taxation in France" 15 April 2026
EVENTS OF INTEREST
- "Quantum Observables for Collider Physics 2026": 20-24 Apr 2026
- CERN Colloquium, Monday 20 Apr 2026, 16:00: "Scenes from the Quantum Century: From Curious Hippies to Novel Tests of Bell’s Inequality" by David Kaiser (MIT)
- LHC Seminar, Tuesday 21 Apr 2026, 11:00: "New insights into strong dynamics and CP violation effects in B-> Kpipi decays at LHCb" by Youhua Yang (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN))
- TH Cosmo Coffee, Wednesday 22 Apr 2026, 11:30: "Surprises in Vacuum Decay or Bounces, Pseudo-Bounces and Antibounces" by Jose Ramon Espinosa Sedano (IFT-UAM/CSIC Madrid)
- TH BSM Forum, Thursday 23 Apr 2026, 13:30: "Axiverse Lampposts" by David Cyncynates
- CERN Colloquium, Thursday 23 Apr 2026, 16:30: "Perspectives of Nuclear Physics in Europe" by Eberhard Widmann (Austrian Academy of Sciences (AT))
- Detector Seminar, Friday 24 Apr 2026, 11:00: "Summary of the 8th Workshop on Medical Applications of Spectroscopic X-ray detectors" by Anthony Butler
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
- LHC and ALICE
- LHC continued with pp production at low mu up to Monday morning, when the intervention on the PM18 compressor started. It lasted up to Wednesday morning, when the conditions were recovered (earlier than expected). A test on the ion optics was performed first, followed by loss maps for the VdM cycle and a short fill at 400b as an intensity step after the stop. Machine resumed then the low-mu pp production at full machine.
- ALICE continued with the data taking at 500 kHz, with negative/negative polarities before the intervention and with positive/positive after it, in preparation for the VdM program that is starting on Friday. During the 400b fill, some tests have been performed by ITS and TPC.
- LHC continued with pp production at low mu up to Monday morning, when the intervention on the PM18 compressor started. It lasted up to Wednesday morning, when the conditions were recovered (earlier than expected). A test on the ion optics was performed first, followed by loss maps for the VdM cycle and a short fill at 400b as an intensity step after the stop. Machine resumed then the low-mu pp production at full machine.
- Open shift blocks:
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.
- Urgent: a full (non expert) QC block starting on 9 May (MM-AA-NN)
- Expert ECS and QC blocks from 19 May
- Urgent: a full (non expert) QC block starting on 9 May (MM-AA-NN)
- Run Manager (6-19 Apr 2026): Magnus Thoegersen
Magnus is a young physicist from Denmark who is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the ALICE Group at the University of Oslo (UIO). He has been part of the ALICE collaboration since 2021, when he carried out his bachelor’s project at Copenhagen University (KU) on the first prototype of the hadronic part of FoCal (Forward Calorimeter) - work he continued during his M.Sc., also at KU.
While completing his B.Sc. and M.Sc. at KU, Magnus took on various shift positions (QC, ECS, DCS, and SL) in the ALICE Run Control (ARC), a role he has continued in as a Ph.D. student at UiO. He further expanded his responsibilities by becoming a Run Manager (RM) for the first time in spring 2025.
Now, a year later, he is taking on this responsibility for a second time and is looking forward to overseeing ALICE’s data-taking operations in the coming weeks. This period will include the swap of the magnet polarities to the negative/negative configuration, as well as the vdM scan.
CONFERENCES
CURRENT CONFERENCES AND SCHOOLS (starting this week)
- Corfu 2026: Workshop on Future Accelerators, Corfu, Greece, 19-26 April 2026
SPEAKING OPPORTUNITIES (events within 3 months or deadline within 1 month)
- QCD Evolution 2026 Workshop, El Escurial, Spain, 11-15 May, abstract deadline 30 April
- 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 30 April (New deadline)
- 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
- 23rd International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI), 6-10 Jul, abstract deadline 24 April
- Looking for a plenary speaker
- ISMD 2026, Chungli, Taiwan, 17-21 Aug, abstract deadline 15 May
- invitations for several topical ALICE plenary talks
- Vertex 2026 in Stoos, Switzerland, 20–24 July, abstract deadline 15 May
- two invitations for talks on ITS2 operations and ITS3 sensor characterisation
- two invitations for talks on ITS2 operations and ITS3 sensor characterisation
- NSTAR 2026, Seville, Spain, 7-11 Sep, abstract deadline 30 Jun
SCHOOLS
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| Upcoming major conferences | ||
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 11 April 2026
- Les Knocckers, France
- ALICE member’s friends, Russia
- Monday 13 April 2026
- Imperial College students, UK
- ALICE member’s friend, Austria
- Tuesday 14 April 2026
- IATA Namur, Belgium
- 37 LO Warszawa, Poland
- Wednesday 15 April 2026
- Liceo Scientifico Statale Scacchi, Bari, Italy
- Coornhert Lyceum, Netherlands; ALICE member’s friends, USA
- Thursday 16 April 2026
- I LO im Leona Kruczkowskiego w Tychach, Poland
- High-school students from Hong Kong
- Friday 17 April 2026 VIP visit
- His Excellency, Dr Richard Rasi, Speaker of the National Council, Slovak Republic
- Saturday 11 April 2026
- ALICE Masterclasses:
- Thursday 16 April 2026 ALICE masterclass for high-school students from Hong Kong
- Recent Social Media Highlights:
DIVERSITY
- "E-learning course “Ethics at CERN” for all CERN personnel":
To ensure that everyone is aware of the guidelines of our ethical framework, the HR Department has developed an e-learning course entitled “Ethics at CERN”, which is available in English and French on the CERN Learning Hub. As of now, this course is mandatory for all members of the CERN personnel. Ethics at CERN
- "Inclusion Matters: CERN’s new participatory inclusion initiative" A new “Inclusion Matters.” initiative invites the CERN community to co-create 50 visible and tangible inclusion actions by 2030.
- 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.