ALICE is a large experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Located 52 meters underground, its detectors are suitable to measure muons produced by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere. In this paper, the studies of the cosmic muons registered by ALICE during Run 2 (2015--2018) are described. The analysis is limited to multimuon events defined as events with more than four detected muons ($N_\mu>4$) and in the zenith angle range $0^{\circ}<\theta<50^{\circ}$. The results are compared with Monte Carlo simulations using three of the main hadronic interaction models describing the air shower development in the atmosphere: QGSJET-II-04, EPOS-LHC, and SIBYLL 2.3d. The interval of the primary cosmic-ray energy involved in the measured muon multiplicity distribution is about $ 4 \times 10^{15}<E_\mathrm{prim}< 6 \times 10^{16}$~eV. In this interval none of the three models is able to describe precisely the trend of the composition of cosmic rays as the energy increases. However, QGSJET-II-04 is found to be the only model capable of reproducing reasonably well the muon multiplicity distribution, assuming a heavy composition of the primary cosmic rays over the whole energy range, while SIBYLL 2.3d and EPOS-LHC underpredict the number of muons in a large interval of multiplicity by more than $20\%$ and $30\%$, respectively. The rate of high muon multiplicity events ($N_\mu>100$) obtained with QGSJET-II-04 and SIBYLL 2.3d is compatible with the data, while EPOS-LHC produces a significantly lower rate ($55\%$ of the measured rate). For both QGSJET-II-04 and SIBYLL 2.3d, the rate is close to the data when the composition is assumed to be dominated by heavy elements, an outcome compatible with the average energy $E_\mathrm{prim} \sim 10^{17}$ eV of these events. This result places significant constraints on more exotic production mechanisms.
Two-particle transverse momentum differential correlators, recently measured in Pb--Pb collisions at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), provide an additional tool to gain insights into particle production mechanisms and infer transport properties, such as the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density, of the medium created in Pb-Pb collisions. The longitudinal long-range correlations and the large azimuthal anisotropy measured at low transverse momenta in small collision systems, namely pp and p-Pb, at LHC energies resemble manifestations of collective behaviour. This suggests that locally equilibrated matter may be produced in these small collision systems, similar to what is observed in Pb-Pb collisions. In this work, the same two-particle transverse momentum differential correlators are exploited in pp and p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV and $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 5.02$ TeV, respectively, to seek evidence for viscous effects. Specifically, the strength and shape of the correlators are studied as a function of the produced particle multiplicity to identify evidence for longitudinal broadening that might reveal the presence of viscous effects in these smaller systems. The measured correlators and their evolution from pp and p--Pb to Pb--Pb collisions are additionally compared to predictions from Monte Carlo event generators, and the potential presence of viscous effects is discussed.
An excess of J/$\psi$ yield at very low transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T} < 0.3$ GeV/$c$), originating from coherent photoproduction, is observed in peripheral and semicentral hadronic Pb$-$Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 5.02$ TeV. The measurement is performed with the ALICE detector via the dimuon decay channel at forward rapidity ($2.5<y<4$). The nuclear modification factor at very low $p_{\rm T}$ and the coherent photoproduction cross section are measured as a function of centrality down to the 10% most central collisions. These results extend the previous study at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ TeV, confirming the clear excess over hadronic production in the $p_{\rm T}$ range 0$-$0.3 GeV/$c$ and the centrality range 70$-$90%, and establishing an excess with a significance greater than 5$\sigma$ also in the 50$-$70% and 30$-$50% centrality ranges. The results are compared with earlier measurements at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ TeV and with different theoretical predictions aiming at describing how coherent photoproduction occurs in hadronic interactions with nuclear overlap.
Differential cross sections for the reaction π−p→π0n were measured at nine incident-pion kinetic energies in the interval from 500 to 1300 MeV. The negative pion beam from the bevatron was focused on a liquidhydrogen target completely surrounded by a cubic array of six steel-plate spark chambers. The spark chambers were triggered on events with neutral final states. Charge-exchange events were identified from the one-shower and two-shower events in the spark-chamber pictures. By the Monte Carlo technique, the π0 distributions were calculated from the bisector distributions of the two-shower π0 events together with the observed γ-ray distributions of the one-shower π0 events. These π0 distributions were fitted with both Legendre-polynomial expansions and power-series expansions by the method of least squares. The extrapolated forward differential cross sections are in good agreement with the dispersion calculations. The Legendre coefficients for the differential cross sections in isospin state T=12 were obtained by combining our results with available data on π±p elastic scattering. In the light of existing phase-shift solutions, the behavior of these coefficients is discussed. The D5F5 interference term that peaks near 900 MeV is verified to be in isospin state T=12 only. We report here also the total neutral cross sections and the cross sections for the production of neutral multipion final states 2π0n and 3π0n. The 4π solid angle and the calibrated energy response of the spark chambers contribute to the accuracy of the results.
Event-by-event fluctuations of the event-wise mean transverse momentum, $\langle p_{\mathrm{T}}\rangle$, of charged particles produced in proton-proton (pp) collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 5.02 TeV, Xe-Xe collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.44 TeV, and Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV are studied using the ALICE detector based on the integral correlator $\langle\langle \Delta p_{\rm T}\Delta p_{\rm T}\rangle\rangle $. The correlator strength is found to decrease monotonically with increasing produced charged-particle multiplicity measured at midrapidity in all three systems. In Xe-Xe and Pb-Pb collisions, the multiplicity dependence of the correlator deviates significantly from a simple power-law scaling as well as from the predictions of the HIJING and AMPT models. The observed deviation from power-law scaling is expected from transverse radial flow in semicentral to central Xe-Xe and Pb-Pb collisions. In pp collisions, the correlation strength is also studied by classifying the events based on the transverse spherocity, $S_0$, of the particle production at midrapidity, used as a proxy for the presence of a pronounced back-to-back jet topology. Low-spherocity (jetty) events feature a larger correlation strength than those with high spherocity (isotropic). The strength and multiplicity dependence of jetty and isotropic events are well reproduced by calculations with the PYTHIA 8 and EPOS LHC models.
Fluctuation measurements are important sources of information on the mechanism of particle production at LHC energies. This article reports the first experimental results on third-order cumulants of the net-proton distributions in Pb$-$Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 5.02$ TeV recorded by the ALICE detector. The results on the second-order cumulants of net-proton distributions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ and $5.02$ TeV are also discussed in view of effects due to the global and local baryon number conservation. The results demonstrate the presence of long-range rapidity correlations between protons and antiprotons. Such correlations originate from the early phase of the collision. The experimental results are compared with HIJING and EPOS model calculations, and the dependence of the fluctuation measurements on the phase-space coverage is examined in the context of lattice quantum chromodynamics (LQCD) and hadron resonance gas (HRG) model estimations. The measured third-order cumulants are consistent with zero within experimental uncertainties of about 4% and are described well by LQCD and HRG predictions.
Recent measurements of charm-baryon production in hadronic collisions have questioned the universality of charm-quark fragmentation across different collision systems. In this work the fragmentation of charm quarks into charm baryons is probed, by presenting the first measurement of the longitudinal jet momentum fraction carried by $\Lambda_{\rm c}^{+}$ baryons, $z^{\mathrm{ch}}_\mathrm{||}$, in hadronic collisions. The results are obtained in proton-proton (pp) collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV at the LHC, with $\Lambda_{\rm c}^{+}$ baryons and charged (track-based) jets reconstructed in the transverse momentum intervals of $3 \leq p_{\rm T}^{\Lambda_{\rm c}^{+}} < 15$ GeV/$c$ and $7 \leq p_{\rm T}^{\rm jet\;ch} < 15$ GeV/$c$, respectively. The $z^{\mathrm{ch}}_\mathrm{||}$ distribution is compared to a measurement of ${\rm D}^0$-tagged charged jets in pp collisions as well as to PYTHIA 8 simulations. The data hints that the fragmentation of charm quarks into charm baryons is softer with respect to charm mesons, in the measured kinematic interval, as predicted by hadronisation models which include colour correlations beyond leading-colour in the string formation.
We present the first systematic comparison of the charged-particle pseudorapidity densities for three widely different collision systems, pp, p-Pb, and Pb-Pb, at the top energy of the Large Hadron Collider ($\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 5.02$ TeV) measured over a wide pseudorapidity range (${-3.5 <\eta <5}$), the widest possible among the four experiments at that facility. The systematic uncertainties are minimised since the measurements are recorded by the same experimental apparatus (ALICE). The distributions for p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions are determined as a function of the centrality of the collisions, while results from pp collisions are reported for inelastic events with at least one charged particle at midrapidity. The charged-particle pseudorapidity densities are, under simple and robust assumptions, transformed to charged-particle rapidity densities. This allows for the calculation and the presentation of the evolution of the width of the rapidity distributions and of a lower bound on the Bjorken energy density, as a function of the number of participants in all three collision systems. We find a decreasing width of the particle production, and roughly a smooth ten fold increase in the energy density, as the system size grows, which is consistent with a gradually higher dense phase of matter.
The interactions of kaons (K) and antikaons ($\mathrm{\overline{K}}$) with few nucleons (N) were studied so far using kaonic atom data and measurements of kaon production and interaction yields in nuclei. Some details of the three-body KNN and $\mathrm{\overline{K}}$NN dynamics are still not well understood, mainly due to the overlap with multi-nucleon interactions in nuclei. An alternative method to probe the dynamics of three-body systems with kaons is to study the final state interaction within triplet of particles emitted in pp collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, which are free from effects due to the presence of bound nucleons. This Letter reports the first femtoscopic study of p$-$p$-$K$^+$ and p$-$p$-$K$^-$ correlations measured in high-multiplicity pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV by the ALICE Collaboration. The analysis shows that the measured p$-$p$-$K$^+$ and p$-$p$-$K$^-$ correlation functions can be interpreted in terms of pairwise interactions in the triplets, indicating that the dynamics of such systems is dominated by the two-body interactions without significant contributions from three-body effects or bound states.
The production of electrons from beauty-hadron decays was measured at midrapidity in proton-proton (pp) and central Pb-Pb collisions at center-of-mass energy per nucleon-nucleon pair $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV, using the ALICE detector at the LHC. The cross section measured in pp collisions in the transverse momentum interval $2 < p_{\rm T} < 8$ GeV/$c$ was compared with models based on perturbative quantum chromodynamics calculations. The yield in the 10% most central Pb-Pb collisions, measured in the interval $2 < p_{\rm T} < 26$ GeV/$c$, was used to compute the nuclear modification factor $R_{\rm AA}$, extrapolating the pp reference cross section to $p_{\rm T}$ larger than 8 GeV/$c$. The measured $R_{\rm AA}$ shows significant suppression of the yield of electrons from beauty-hadron decays at high $p_{\rm T}$ and does not show a significant dependence on $p_{\rm T}$ above 8 GeV/$c$ within uncertainties. The results are described by several theoretical models based on different implementations of the interaction of heavy quarks with a quark-gluon plasma, which predict a smaller energy loss for beauty quarks compared to light and charm quarks.
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