ALICE is a general-purpose heavy-ion experiment designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter and the quark–gluon plasma in nucleus–nucleus collisions at the LHC. It currently involves more than 900 physicists and senior engineers, from both the nuclear and high-energy physics sectors, from over 90 institutions in about 30 countries.The ALICE detector is designed to cope with the highest particle multiplicities above those anticipated for Pb–Pb collisions (dNch/dy up to 8000) and it will be operational at the start-up of the LHC. In addition to heavy systems, the ALICE Collaboration will study collisions of lower-mass ions, which are a means of varying the energy density, and protons (both pp and pA), which primarily provide reference data for the nucleus–nucleus collisions. In addition, the pp data will allow for a number of genuine pp physics studies.The detailed design of the different detector systems has been laid down in a number of Technical Design Reports issued between mid-1998 and the end of 2004. The experiment is currently under construction and will be ready for data taking with both proton and heavy-ion beams at the start-up of the LHC.Since the comprehensive information on detector and physics performance was last published in the ALICE Technical Proposal in 1996, the detector, as well as simulation, reconstruction and analysis software have undergone significant development. The Physics Performance Report (PPR) provides an updated and comprehensive summary of the performance of the various ALICE subsystems, including updates to the Technical Design Reports, as appropriate.The PPR is divided into two volumes. Volume I, published in 2004 (CERN/LHCC 2003-049, ALICE Collaboration 2004 J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 30 1517–1763), contains in four chapters a short theoretical overview and an extensive reference list concerning the physics topics of interest to ALICE, the experimental conditions at the LHC, a short summary and update of the subsystem designs, and a description of the offline framework and Monte Carlo event generators.The present volume, Volume II, contains the majority of the information relevant to the physics performance in proton–proton, proton–nucleus, and nucleus–nucleus collisions. Following an introductory overview, Chapter 5 describes the combined detector performance and the event reconstruction procedures, based on detailed simulations of the individual subsystems. Chapter 6 describes the analysis and physics reach for a representative sample of physics observables, from global event characteristics to hard processes.

We report on a measurement of the parity violating asymmetry in the elastic scattering of polarized electrons off unpolarized protons with the A4 apparatus at MAMI in Mainz at a four momentum transfer value of Q 2 = 0.108 (GeV/c) 2 and at a forward electron scattering angle of 30 • < θe < 40 • . The measured asymmetry is ALR( ep) = (-1.36 ± 0.29stat ± 0.13syst) × 10 −6 . The expectation from the Standard Model assuming no strangeness contribution to the vector current is A0 = (-2.06± 0.14) × 10 −6 . We have improved the statistical accuracy by a factor of 3 as compared to our previous measurements at a higher Q 2 . We have extracted the strangeness contribution to the electromagnetic form factors from our data to be G s E + 0.106 G s M = 0.071 ± 0.036 at Q 2 = 0.108 (GeV/c) 2 . As in our previous measurement at higher momentum transfer for G s E + 0.230 G s M , we again find the value for G s E + 0.106 G s M to be positive, this time at an improved significance level of 2 σ.

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Beam asymmetry and differential cross-section for the reaction γp → ηp were measured from production threshold to 1500 MeV photon laboratory energy. The two dominant neutral decay modes of the η-meson, η → 2γ and η → 3π 0 , were analyzed. The full set of measurements is in good agreement with previously published results. Our data were compared with three models. They all fit satisfactorily the results but their respective resonance contributions are quite different. The possible photoexcitation of a narrow state N (1670) was investigated and no evidence was found. PACS. 13.60.Le Meson production-13.88.+e Polarization in interactions and scattering-25.20.Lj Pho-toproduction reactions