Hadron-hadron collisions at high energies are investigated in the Ultrarelativistic-Quantum-Molecular-Dynamics approach. This microscopic transport model describes the phenomenology of hadronic interactions at low and intermediate energies ( √ s < 5 GeV) in terms of interactions between known hadrons and their resonances. At higher energies, √ s > 5 GeV, the excitation of color strings and their subsequent fragmentation into hadrons dominates the multiple production of particles in the UrQMD model. The model shows a fair overall agreement with a large body of experimental h-h data over a wide range of h-h center-of-mass energies. Hadronic reaction data with higher precision would be useful to support the use of the UrQMD model for relativistic heavy ion collisions.

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ALICE is the heavy-ion experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The experiment continuously took data during the first physics campaign of the machine from fall 2009 until early 2013, using proton and lead-ion beams. In this paper we describe the running environment and the data handling procedures, and discuss the performance of the ALICE detectors and analysis methods for various physics observables.