We present an analysis of di-hadron correlations using recently developed methods for background subtraction which allow for higher precision measurements with fewer assumptions about the background. These studies indicate that low momentum jets interacting with the medium do not equilibrate with the medium, but rather that interactions with the medium lead to more subtle increases in their widths and fragmentation functions, consistent with observations from studies of higher momentum fully reconstructed jets. The away-side shape is not consistent with a Mach cone.

We report the first measurement of the net-charge fluctuations in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV, measured with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The dynamical fluctuations per unit entropy are observed to decrease when going from peripheral to central collisions. An additional reduction in the amount of fluctuations is seen in comparison to the results from lower energies. We examine the dependence of fluctuations on the pseudorapidity interval, which may account for the dilution of fluctuations during the evolution of the system. We find that the fluctuations at LHC are smaller compared to the measurements at the Relativistic heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), and as such, closer to what has been theoretically predicted for the formation of Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP).

In high-energy heavy-ion collisions, the correlations between the emitted particles can be used as a probe to gain insight into the charge creation mechanisms. In this Letter, we report the first results of such studies using the electric charge balance function in the relative pseudorapidity ($\Delta\eta$) and azimuthal angle ($\Delta\varphi$) in Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV with the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The width of the balance function decreases with growing centrality (i.e. for more central collisions) in both projections. This centrality dependence is not reproduced by HIJING, while AMPT, a model which incorporates strings and parton rescattering, exhibits qualitative agreement with the measured correlations in $\Delta\varphi$ but fails to describe the correlations in $\Delta\eta$. A thermal blast-wave model incorporating local charge conservation and tuned to describe the $p_{\rm T}$ spectra and v$_2$ measurements reported by ALICE, is used to fit the centrality dependence of the width of the balance function and to extract the average separation of balancing charges at freeze-out. The comparison of our results with measurements at lower energies reveals an ordering with $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$: the balance functions become narrower with increasing energy for all centralities. This is consistent with the effect of larger radial flow at the LHC energies but also with the late stage creation scenario of balancing charges. However, the relative decrease of the balance function widths in $\Delta\eta$ and $\Delta\varphi$ with centrality from the highest SPS to the LHC energy exhibits only small differences. This observation cannot be interpreted solely within the framework where the majority of the charge is produced at a later stage in the evolution of the heavy--ion collision.

Measurements of charge dependent azimuthal correlations with the ALICE detector at the LHC are reported for Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ TeV. Two- and three-particle charge-dependent azimuthal correlations in the pseudo-rapidity range $|\eta| < 0.8$ are presented as a function of the collision centrality, particle separation in pseudo-rapidity, and transverse momentum. A clear signal compatible with a charge-dependent separation relative to the reaction plane is observed, which shows little or no collision energy dependence when compared to measurements at RHIC energies. This provides a new insight for understanding the nature of the charge dependent azimuthal correlations observed at RHIC and LHC energies.

Angular correlations between charged trigger and associated particles are measured by the ALICE detector in p-Pb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV for transverse momentum ranges within 0.5 < $p_{\rm T}^{\rm assoc}$ < $p_{\rm T}^{\rm trig}$ < 4 GeV/$c$. The correlations are measured over two units of pseudorapidity and full azimuthal angle in different intervals of event multiplicity, and expressed as associated yield per trigger particle. Two long-range ridge-like structures, one on the near side and one on the away side, are observed when the per-trigger yield obtained in low-multiplicity events is subtracted from the one in high-multiplicity events. The excess on the near-side is qualitatively similar to that recently reported by the CMS collaboration, while the excess on the away-side is reported for the first time. The two-ridge structure projected onto azimuthal angle is quantified with the second and third Fourier coefficients as well as by near-side and away-side yields and widths. The yields on the near side and on the away side are equal within the uncertainties for all studied event multiplicity and $p_{\rm T}$ bins, and the widths show no significant evolution with event multiplicity or $p_{\rm T}$. These findings suggest that the near-side ridge is accompanied by an essentially identical away-side ridge.

The directed flow of charged particles at mid-rapidity is measured in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\rm{NN}}=2.76$ TeV relative to the collision symmetry plane defined by the spectator nucleons. A negative slope of the rapidity-odd directed flow component with approximately 3 times smaller magnitude than found at the highest RHIC energy is observed. This suggests a smaller longitudinal tilt of the initial system and disfavors the strong fireball rotation predicted for the LHC energies. The rapidity-even directed flow component is measured for the first time with spectators and found to be independent of pseudorapidity with a sign change at transverse momenta $p_{\rm T}$ between $1.2$ and $1.7$ GeV/$c$. Combined with the observation of a vanishing rapidity-even $p_{\rm T}$ shift along the spectator deflection this is strong evidence for dipole-like initial density fluctuations in the overlap zone of the nuclei. Similar trends in the rapidity-even directed flow and the estimate from two-particle correlations at mid-rapidity, which is larger by about a factor of 40, indicate a weak correlation between fluctuating participant and spectator symmetry planes. These observations open new possibilities for investigation of the initial conditions in heavy-ion collisions with spectator nucleons.

We present the results of three-dimensional femtoscopic analyses for charged and neutral kaons recorded by ALICE in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}$ = 2.76 TeV. Femtoscopy is used to measure the space-time characteristics of particle production from the effects of quantum statistics and final-state interactions in two-particle correlations. Kaon femtoscopy is an important supplement to that of pions because it allows one to distinguish between different model scenarios working equally well for pions. In particular, we compare the measured 3D kaon radii with a purely hydrodynamical calculation and a model where the hydrodynamic phase is followed by a hadronic rescattering stage. The former predicts an approximate transverse mass ($m_{\mathrm{T}}$) scaling of source radii obtained from pion and kaon correlations. This $m_{\mathrm{T}}$ scaling appears to be broken in our data, which indicates the importance of the hadronic rescattering phase at LHC energies. A $k_{\mathrm{T}}$ scaling of pion and kaon source radii is observed instead. The time of maximal emission of the system is estimated using the three-dimensional femtoscopic analysis for kaons. The measured emission time is larger than that of pions. Our observation is well supported by the hydrokinetic model predictions.

The azimuthal correlations of D mesons and charged particles were measured with the ALICE detector in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV and p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=5.02$ TeV at the Large Hadron Collider. D$^0$, D$^+$, and D$^{*+}$ mesons and their charge conjugates with transverse momentum $3<p_{\rm T}<16$ GeV/$c$ and rapidity in the nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass system $|y_{\rm cms}|<0.5$ (pp collisions) and $-0.96<y_{\rm cms}<0.04$ (p-Pb collisions) were correlated to charged particles with $p_{\rm T}>0.3$ Gev/$c$. The properties of the correlation peak induced by the jet containing the D meson, described in terms of the yield of charged particles in the peak and peak width, are compatible within uncertainties between the two collision systems, and described by Monte-Carlo simulations based on the PYTHIA, POWHEG and EPOS 3 event generators.

The strength of forward-backward (FB) multiplicity correlations is measured by the ALICE detector in proton-proton (pp) collisions at $\sqrt{s}=0.9$, 2.76 and 7 TeV. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region ($|\eta| < 0.8$) for the transverse momentum $p_{\rm T}>0.3$ GeV/$c$. Two separate pseudorapidity windows of width ($\delta \eta$) ranging from 0.2 to 0.8 are chosen symmetrically around $\eta=0$. The multiplicity correlation strength ($b_{\rm cor}$) is studied as a function of the pseudorapidity gap ($\eta_{\rm gap}$) between the two windows as well as the width of these windows. The correlation strength is found to decrease with increasing $\eta_{\rm gap}$ and shows a non-linear increase with $\delta\eta$. A sizable increase of the correlation strength with the collision energy, which cannot be explained exclusively by the increase of the mean multiplicity inside the windows, is observed. The correlation coefficient is also measured for multiplicities in different configurations of two azimuthal sectors selected within the symmetric FB $\eta$-windows. Two different contributions, the short-range (SR) and the long-range (LR), are observed. The energy dependence of $b_{\rm cor}$ is found to be weak for the SR component while it is strong for the LR component. Moreover, the correlation coefficient is studied for particles belonging to various transverse momentum intervals chosen to have the same mean multiplicity. Both SR and LR contributions to $b_{\rm cor}$ are found to increase with $p_{\rm T}$ in this case. Results are compared to PYTHIA and PHOJET event generators and to a string-based phenomenological model. The observed dependencies of $b_{\rm cor}$ add new constraints on phenomenological models.

We present the first azimuthally differential measurements of the pion source size relative to the second harmonic event plane in Pb-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon-nucleon pair of $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV. The measurements have been performed in the centrality range 0-50% and for pion pair transverse momenta $0.2 < k_{\rm T} < 0.7$ GeV/$c$. We find that the $R_{\rm side}$ and $R_{\rm out}$ radii, which characterize the pion source size in the directions perpendicular and parallel to the pion transverse momentum, oscillate out of phase, similar to what was observed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The final-state source eccentricity, estimated via $R_{\rm side}$ oscillations, is found to be significantly smaller than the initial-state source eccentricity, but remains positive; indicating that even after a stronger expansion in the in-plane direction, the pion source at the freeze-out is still elongated in the out-of-plane direction. The 3+1D hydrodynamic calculations are in qualitative agreement with observed centrality and transverse momentum $R_{\rm side}$ oscillations, but systematically underestimate the oscillation magnitude.