CERN Accelerating science

Message from the Spokesperson

We would like to wish everyone a healthy and productive New Year! 2023 promises to be an exciting year for ALICE. We will soon have the first calibrated reconstruction of the large sample of proton-proton collisions that we collected last year and are looking forward to the first physics results. At the end of March, the LHC will start up again, allowing us to collect more proton collision events and to further optimise our data taking efficiency, in preparation for the first full heavy-ion run with the upgraded detector in September and October. Please note that you can already start reserving your shift slots for the data taking.

At the same time, the R&D for ITS3 and FoCal are well under way and we plan to finalise the technical design reports in 2023. Looking further ahead to ALICE 3, we expect to see more R&D activities starting up this year, while at the same time, we have to start planning the construction phase and write a scoping document that summarises our plans to the funding agencies, the LHCC and the CERN management.

We would also like to take this opportunity to warmly thank Luciano, Barbara, Mateusz and the outgoing management team for keeping ALICE on track despite the unexpected challenges of the past years and for formulating the future heavy ion program for Run 5 and 6 with ALICE 3.

We are looking forward to working with everyone and to meeting you at CERN or in other places,

Marco, Bedanga, Kai.