ALICE Newsletter No. 407
|
No.407,
|
|
ONGOING AND UPCOMING EVENTS
 |
"ALICE 3" Week: May 2026
4-8 May 2026
- "ALICE 3" Week: 4-8 May 2026:
- "ALICE 3" Week at CERN includes plenary sessions, parallel subsystem sessions on Tuesdays, the Boards on Thursday and the Collaboration Board on Friday. Open to all.
- Reception at Restaurant - 2 on Wednesday 6 May at 7 PM: Open to all.
- "ALICE 3" Week at CERN includes plenary sessions, parallel subsystem sessions on Tuesdays, the Boards on Thursday and the Collaboration Board on Friday. Open to all.
- ALICE Physics Forum: LHCP approvals and HP early approvals / previews: 23 April - 4 May
- 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
NEWS and ANNOUNCEMENTS
At Point-2 on Wednesday (29 April) evening! |
|
- 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: Excellent performance at the LHC" By Matteo Solfaroli, Deputy Leader of the Operations Group (BE-OP)
- "A collective commitment to safety as LS3 approaches" By Mark Thomson & Benoît Delille
- "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
- "Taxation in France" 15 April 2026
EVENTS OF INTEREST
- QCD Seminars, Monday 4 May 2026, 14:00: "Anomalous scaling of linear power corrections" by Silvia Zanoli (University of Oxford)
- "Gravitational Waves from Amplitudes" 4–8 May 2026 CERN
- "SC4RC - Sustainability Conference for Responsible Research Computing" 4-8 May 2026 CERN
- Theory Colloquia, Wednesday 6 May 2026, 14:00: "Gravitational Waves, Feynman Integrals, and Machine Learning" by Mao Zeng (University of Edinburgh)
- Archives, Library and Open Science events, Friday 8 May 2026, 10:00: "Meet the author of A Concise History of Radiation Detectors" by Fabio Sauli
- Detector Seminar, Friday 8 May 2026, 11:00: "Advanced Compute Scaling in the Angstrom Era of Integrated Circuit Technologies" by Anabela Veloso (Imec)
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 was performing machine development in the first part of the week.
- Once back into operations, the commissioning for the 1.2 +1.2 TeV run through aperture measurements and loss maps were completed.
- The special run started on Wednesday night with the 75b fill, followed then by the 400b one.
- On Thursday morning an access took place, and after it the 800b fill followed.
- The 1.2 + 1.2 TeV special run is expected to last up to Friday morning, when pp production at full energy and high mu will be resumed.
- During the MD ALICE was kept SUPERSAFE with ITS OFF.
- Once MD was over, ALICE completed the setup for the 1.2 + 1.2 TeV run, in which a new operational mode for the TPC was tested. In particular, the gain was set to 20, so to get sensitive to the observation of possible highly-ionizing particles.
- Data at different collision rates were taken during the first fills, also including FIT, ITF, TOF and MFT in the first ones, and also MCH and MID starting from the third one.
- This first test was successful: TPC operations proceeded smoothly, properly recording the observable of interest, and the runs proceeded without any issue for the whole fill duration.
- Once the 1.2 TeV run will be over ALICE will be back to pp data taking with -/- polarities at 500 kHz.
- 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 (20 Apr - 3 May 2026): Minjung Kim
Minjung is an experimental research fellow at CERN, following a postdoctoral position at UC Berkeley and a PhD from Heidelberg University. Her research focuses on hard probes in small systems, including ultra-peripheral collisions. She has extensive hardware experience across several major projects, including conducting mass production tests for ALPIDE chips for the ITS, managing high-voltage operations and repairs for the TRD during Long Shutdown 2, and developing tracking software for the EPIC detector at the EIC (BNL).
She also has extensive experience in operations, having completed her first RM term in 2024. During the current term, she will coordinate pp data taking, during which a scan of the collision rate - requested by the lumi group - is scheduled, as well as the transition to the negative/negative magnet polarity configuration after the VdM.
CONFERENCES
CURRENT CONFERENCES AND SCHOOLS (starting this week)
- DIS 2026 (33rd International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects), 4-8 May 2026, Bologna, Italy.
SPEAKING OPPORTUNITIES (events within 3 months or deadline within 1 month)
- QCD@Work 2026 - International Workshop on Quantum Chromodynamics - Theory and Experiment, Trani, Italy, 16-19 June, abstract deadline 30 April
- ISMD 2026 (54th International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics), Chungli, Taiwan, 17-21 Aug, abstract deadline 15 May
- Many speaking opportunities for ALICE. Please contact CC chairs.
- Many speaking opportunities for ALICE. Please contact CC chairs.
- 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
- 12th International Workshop on Semiconductor Pixel Detectors for Particles and Imaging (PIXEL2026), 8-12 Sep 2026, Miyazaki, Japan, abstract deadline: 7 June
- Quark-Gluon Dynamics in the Nuclear Medium, 9-13 Nov 2026, Trento, Italy, abstract deadline: 30 Sep 2026
- Kruger26 (International Workshop on Discovery Physics at the LHC), 30 November – 4 December 2026, Kruger National Park, South Africa
- Invitations for 3 talks; Introduction to Heavy-Ion Physics, Jets and Heavy Flavour as QGP Probes, Advances in Detector Technology
SCHOOLS
- 17th Trans-European School of High Energy Physics, 10-18 July 2026, Suceava, Rumania - Deadline 7 May
| Upcoming major conferences | ||
18-22 May 2026 |
|
|
|
21-26 Jun 2026 |
|
|
30 July - 5 Aug 2026 |
|
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:
- Monday 27 April 2026
- Korea finding Agency
- Tuesday 28 April 2026
- Model General Lyceum of Heraklion, Greece
- College Notre Dame du Bon Conseil, France
- Wednesday 29 April 2026
- Hutton U3A, UK
- colleague’s family, Denmark
- Utrecht University, Netherlands
- Thursday 30 April 2026
- International School of Brussels, Belgium
- Imvros Greek Minority High School, Türkiye
- Monday 27 April 2026
- Recent Social Media Highlights:
- Mexico in ALICE 3
- ALICE ITS3 by Alexander Kluge
- ALICE observes partonic flow even in small colliding systems
- Do all jets lose energy in the same way?
- International Women’s Day, 8 March
- LHC Career Event: 17 Mar 2026
- ALICE 3 MID
- ALICE EMCal
- International Day of Women and Girls in Science
- Curiouser and curiouser: a riddle at the ALICE detector
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.
JOB OPPORTUNITIES